Why a Plane-Size Machine Could Foil a Race to Build Gas Power Plants

nytimes.com  By Rebecca F. Elliott  April 8, 2025

Wait times for the hulking turbines needed to turn natural gas into electricity have doubled in the past year as companies scramble to build data centers for A.I.

To hear Trump administration officials and many energy executives tell it, the United States is on the precipice of a new golden age for natural gas that will be driven in large part by the voracious power needs of data centers.

But turning natural gas into electricity requires giant metal turbines that are increasingly difficult to secure. Companies that haven’t already reserved this equipment, which can weigh as much as a large airplane and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, are facing waits of three or four years, about twice as long as just a year earlier.

The cost of building gas power plants has also soared — so much so that in some parts of the country, solar panels and batteries are likely to be cheaper, energy executives and consultants said. By some estimates, it now costs two or three times as much to build a gas-fired power plant as it did a few years ago.

The challenge of securing enough gas turbines is one of the clearest examples of how booming investment in artificial intelligence is reshaping the electric power industry, overwhelming suppliers and upending longstanding notions of what makes sense financially.

It’s also a reminder of the gap that often exists between the plans and goals of politicians and executives and the reality on the ground.

U.S. gas demand is clearly rising, all the more so because of the data centers needed to train and use chatbots and other forms of A.I. But there are limits to how much more gas the country can use — limits that elected officials and energy tycoons cannot easily wish away.

GE Vernova, the biggest manufacturer of large gas turbines in the world, is among those betting that the recent flurry of interest in gas power will last. The company, formed last year in the breakup of General Electric, is spending more than $160 million to overhaul its gas turbine plant on the edge of Greenville, S.C.

By the end of next year, the 1.5-million-square-foot factory is expected to churn out about 35 percent more gas turbines. The building is a whirring, beeping expanse of partly automated assembly lines interspersed with metal turbine components.

“More electrons are going to be created from gas,” Scott Strazik, chief executive of GE Vernova, said in a recent interview. “Appetite is very real.”

About this time last year, interest in natural gas to power data centers picked up, catching much of the energy industry off guard.

Tech giants like Microsoft and Google pledged years ago to lower their emissions. But as it has become clearer how much and how quickly their energy needs will grow, companies have turned to gas. When burned, natural gas produces carbon dioxide, the leading cause of climate change. But gas plants can be built faster than nuclear power plants and operate all day, unlike wind and solar energy.

As sales of turbines climbed, so did wait times and prices. It takes about four months for GE Vernova to assemble the turbines used in power plants. But that clock starts only after the company has received all the components, like the dense metal fins that catch hot air inside the turbine, causing a rotor to spin.

These days, the backlog is so severe as to be reminiscent of the snarled supply chains of the pandemic, which constrained production of cars, medical devices and much more.

Between those delays and the time it takes to build a power plant, a company starting from scratch today would probably not have a new gas plant running before 2030. Other critical electrical equipment like transformers is also harder to get.

By comparison, a large solar project that includes batteries to store energy for use in the evening could reasonably be completed in three years, said Jesse Noffsinger, a partner at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

Chris Wright, the energy secretary, said the Trump administration was encouraging power equipment suppliers to increase U.S. manufacturing capacity. In an interview, he also floated the possibility of invoking the Defense Production Act, which authorizes the president to extend loans and take other steps to encourage companies to produce critical equipment. President Trump used the law, enacted in 1950, to boost production of things like ventilators during the pandemic.

Mr. Wright, who previously led an oil and gas company, said he expected natural gas to soon meet about half the country’s electricity needs, up from 43 percent last year. As for wind and solar, “they’re going to continue to play some role,” Mr. Wright said. “But are they going to be backbones of an electricity grid? Never.”

Mr. Wright is much more optimistic than other energy experts were about gas. Consulting firms like McKinsey and Rystad Energy expect gas power’s share of the U.S. electricity market to remain relatively steady as renewables grow more quickly.

It is hard to compare the cost of gas power with that of solar panels or wind turbines and batteries. That is because it is not always sunny or windy, meaning other power sources are sometimes needed to complement renewables. Gas costs also add up over time and can spike during crises, as they did after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. By contrast, solar and wind farms cost relatively little to operate once they are built.

Generally speaking, building a gas power plant can now be about as expensive as installing solar panels paired with batteries, according to Rystad, when including tax credits that apply to renewable energy and storage. One big factor is that gas turbines now cost about 50 percent more than they did just 10 months ago, according to the investment bank Jefferies.

“We’re in this weird no man’s land where it’s very profitable to run a plant and it’s clear we’re going to need more electricity,” Mr. Noffsinger of McKinsey said of gas plants. But in some markets, he added, it is unclear whether building new ones will make financial sense.

Lawmakers in Texas, which gets about 30 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, have sought to ensure gas plants get built anyway. The state’s Senate recently passed a bill aimed at ensuring that half of any new generation capacity comes from sources other than wind, solar and batteries. The House has not yet taken up the bill.

“My biggest concern is: How big? How long?” Bill Newsom, chief executive of another gas turbine manufacturer, Mitsubishi Power Americas, said of the current flurry of interest in gas. “I lose sleep over it every night.”

This year, 93 percent of the electricity capacity added to U.S. grids will be renewable energy and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration. Gas will account for just 7 percent.

S&P Global Commodity Insights recently estimated that by 2040, the United States would need to add at least nine times as much renewable energy and batteries as gas generation capacity to meet new electricity demand. That is partly because many customers prefer renewable energy, and various bottlenecks are slowing the construction of gas-fired power plants.

But forecasts vary widely, even over just the next few years. Complicating matters is that utilities have often overstated power needs. From 2012 to 2023, utility planners overestimated electricity demand by 23 percent, on average, in their 10-year forecasts, according to RMI, a nonprofit research organization that aims to reduce emissions.

Joseph Dominguez, who runs the country’s largest nuclear power plant operator, is among those who question how big the gas power boom will ultimately be. His company, Constellation Energy, struck a $16.4 billion deal in January to buy Calpine, which owns many gas power plants.

“But that’s a very different thing than saying that I would invest to replicate that fleet today,” Mr. Dominguez said. He pulled up a chart on his tablet showing how much scientists expect global temperatures to rise in the coming decades. Last year was the hottest on record.

“This world portends to be quite ugly for its inhabitants and will drive political outcomes that are radically different than those which we’re discussing today,” Mr. Dominguez said.