A proposed $33 billion gas-fired power plant near Portsmouth, Ohio, backed by Japanese investment and promoted by President Donald Trump, would generate 9.2 gigawatts of electricity if built as planned. That capacity would dwarf every existing natural gas facility in the country by a wide margin, raising questions about whether the project can actually deliver on its extraordinary scale.
SoftBank’s Ohio Megaproject and Its $33 Billion Price Tag
The facility, called the Portsmouth Powered Land Project, would be developed by SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp., according to a Commerce Department fact sheet released in February 2026. Japan is expected to invest $33 billion in the project, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick promoting the deal alongside the White House. The plant’s planned location sits in the vicinity of Portsmouth, Ohio, a region with deep ties to federal energy infrastructure but limited recent private investment at this scale. Local officials have touted the proposal as a potential anchor for thousands of construction jobs and long-term operations roles, though no binding labor or community benefits agreements have been made public.
At 9.2 gigawatts, the project would be roughly 2.5 times larger than the current biggest gas plant in the United States. Florida’s West County Energy Center holds that distinction with a certified capacity of 3,750 megawatts, as documented by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. No other operating gas facility in the country comes close to the Ohio project’s stated output, which means the Portsmouth plant would not just set a new record but redefine the upper boundary of what a single U.S. gas installation looks like. Energy analysts note that such a leap in scale would require unprecedented coordination on fuel supply, grid interconnection, and reliability planning, especially in a region already navigating coal retirements and growing renewable generation.
The $550 Billion U.S.-Japan Framework Behind the Deal
The Portsmouth project did not emerge in isolation. It falls under a broader bilateral arrangement that the Trump administration has been building since mid-2025. The U.S.-Japan investment framework established a $550 billion vehicle targeting sectors including energy and AI, with Japanese and U.S. institutions expected to co-finance large industrial projects. A September 2025 memorandum of understanding formalized implementation details, and the administration later moved to execute the framework through executive action, setting a 15% baseline tariff alongside the investment commitments. The Portsmouth plant has been highlighted in administration talking points as an emblem of how those tariffs are meant to be paired with inbound capital flows and manufacturing activity.
The Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, has analyzed the deal’s financial mechanics. According to a CRS insight, Japan’s investment support may flow through loans and loan guarantees from government-affiliated institutions such as the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. The framework includes a profit-sharing structure, and investments must occur before January 2029. That deadline creates real urgency for a project of this size, since building 9.2 gigawatts of gas-fired capacity typically requires years of permitting, procurement, and construction. Whether the timeline is realistic for a facility this large remains an open question that neither the White House nor SB Energy has publicly addressed in detail, and CRS notes that slippage could expose both governments to political blowback if promised jobs and capacity fail to materialize on schedule.
A Former Uranium Site With Unfinished Cleanup
The project’s proposed location adds a layer of complexity that most coverage has glossed over. The Portsmouth site is the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a Cold War-era uranium enrichment facility now managed by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. Cleanup and decommissioning work at the site is ongoing, meaning the land carries environmental liabilities that could complicate or delay construction of a massive new fossil fuel plant. Decades of enrichment operations left behind contaminated structures, soil, and groundwater that DOE is still working to remediate, and any large industrial reuse would need to be coordinated with that long-running program.
No primary DOE or EPA records confirm that site-specific environmental impact assessments or land-use approvals have been completed for the gas plant. The Commerce Department fact sheet describes the location as the “vicinity of Portsmouth” without specifying whether the plant would sit on the former federal property itself or on adjacent land. That distinction matters enormously: building on or near an active remediation site could trigger additional federal review requirements and inflate costs well beyond the $33 billion estimate. The gap between the project’s promotional rollout and the absence of public permitting documentation is the clearest signal that the Portsmouth Powered Land Project is still in its earliest stages, regardless of the headline-grabbing numbers attached to it, and it underscores how much of the initiative currently exists on paper rather than in concrete engineering plans.
Trump’s Broader Push to Expand Gas and LNG
The Portsmouth announcement fits within a wider administration effort to accelerate fossil fuel development. Earlier, the Trump administration granted Venture Global a conditional export permit for its CP2 liquefied natural gas project in Louisiana, a decision that Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana praised as a step toward “reliable and affordable energy”. That approval, reported by Reuters, sent Venture Global’s stock up 6.5% from the prior close, signaling investor confidence that U.S. policy is aligned with aggressive expansion of gas exports. The administration has framed these decisions as part of a broader “energy dominance” agenda that treats domestic gas as both an economic engine and a geopolitical tool.
The pattern is consistent: the administration is using trade agreements, executive actions, and export permits to signal that the U.S. is open for large-scale gas investment. The $550 billion Japan framework targets not only energy but also emerging fields like artificial intelligence and quantum technology, reflecting a strategy that ties energy buildout to data center demand and advanced computing. For the Portsmouth project specifically, the logic is that surging electricity needs from AI infrastructure justify a gas plant of unprecedented size. But that logic depends on assumptions about future power demand that have not been independently validated against grid integration studies for Ohio or the broader PJM Interconnection region, raising the possibility that the project is being sized more for political symbolism than for carefully modeled reliability needs.
Security, Politics, and the Risks of an Unprecedented Scale-Up
Beyond economics and environmental questions, a 9.2-gigawatt facility would be a critical node in the nation’s infrastructure, making security a central concern. The Department of Homeland Security’s infrastructure guidance, including resources under its resilience initiatives, emphasizes physical hardening, cyber defenses, and contingency planning for high-value energy assets. A single plant of this magnitude would concentrate risk in one location: a major outage, cyberattack, or natural disaster affecting Portsmouth could reverberate across multiple states. Grid planners would need to weigh the efficiencies of scale against the vulnerabilities created by putting so much capacity behind one fence line, especially as extreme weather and cyber threats grow more sophisticated.
Politically, the project has become a showcase for Trump-era industrial policy that blends tariffs, targeted foreign capital, and large-scale domestic construction. Administration messaging tools such as the Trump Card program and related outreach campaigns have highlighted energy megaprojects as proof points that the trade strategy is delivering tangible investments. At the same time, health and environmental advocates point to federal initiatives like TrumpRx, which focuses on lowering drug costs, as evidence that public policy can be steered toward direct consumer benefits rather than subsidizing fossil fuel infrastructure. That tension underscores the broader debate around Portsmouth: whether channeling tens of billions of dollars into a single gas plant is the best use of limited political and financial capital at a moment when the energy system is under pressure to decarbonize, modernize, and become more resilient all at once.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
