AI data center boom drives surge in proposed gas plants

Artificial-intelligence and cloud expansion is fueling a parallel rush to build natural-gas power plants for data centers, with a July 1 tally identifying 74 projects across the United States. The Environmental Integrity Project said the plants, including 71 new facilities and three expansions, could generate about 143 gigawatts of electricity while emitting roughly 662 million tons of greenhouse gases a year.

That scale would put the power buildout in the same league as the annual emissions of countries such as Australia or France. It also shows how the AI race is no longer just a matter of chips, servers and software; it is becoming a fight over gas turbines, utility planning and the pollution that follows both.

Texas accounts for nearly half of the 74 plants, according to the review, with Ohio home to 10 projects, Pennsylvania to six and West Virginia to four. Many of the facilities are being pitched as behind-the-meter plants, a structure that lets developers supply a single customer directly and can move ahead in weeks or months in some cases, rather than the years often required for large grid-connected plants to clear permitting, environmental studies and public hearings.

The Environmental Integrity Project said the 74 projects would also release 159,142 tons a year of health-harming air pollutants, including 44,281 tons of nitrogen oxides and 32,684 tons of fine particulate matter. The report flagged benzene and other pollution risks for communities near the plants, especially in lower-income areas already carrying heavier pollution burdens. It also said about two thirds of U.S. data centers built or planned over the last four years are in water-stressed regions, a warning that the boom is not only an emissions story but a water-use story as well.

The political backdrop has pushed in the same direction. Trump administration officials have treated rapid data-center construction as a national-security and economic priority and have sought to cut barriers to building the needed infrastructure. At the same time, Global Energy Monitor said in January that the United States had the most gas-fired power capacity in development anywhere in the world, with more than one-third of that capacity slated to directly power data centers on-site. The group said U.S. gas-fired capacity in development nearly tripled in 2025 to almost 252 gigawatts, underscoring that the projects identified by the Environmental Integrity Project sit inside a much larger national wave.