Utilities and developers have now reported 60.4 gigawatts of new grid-connected gas generation planned through the end of 2030, up from 41.8 gigawatts in the December 2025 forecast. That is a 44% increase, and the groups that compiled it, Environment America Research & Policy Center and Frontier Group, count it as eight months of growth.
Their analysis, with an interactive map, points to one cause: data centers. Gas capacity under development has nearly tripled since early 2023, when the same method showed 20.4 gigawatts expected by 2030, while planned wind additions have dropped 33.9% since December 2025. Solar still leads all expected new capacity, but its planned additions have stalled.
Environment America’s Tally of 60.4 Gigawatts
The raw material is the filings that owners of planned generators submit to the federal government. Environment America’s analysis, written by Tony Dutzik and Libby Werneke of Frontier Group and Johanna Neumann of Environment America, draws on the Energy Information Administration’s Electric Power Monthly for July 2026, published in September, and takes plant additions as filed beginning in August 2026. Set against the December 2025 forecast of 41.8 gigawatts, that gives the eight months between the baseline and the latest filings, and the 18.6-gigawatt difference is the 44%. EIA’s monthly release, last updated Sept. 24 with July data, carries a planned-additions table (Table 6.5) and a map of units in the pipeline.
Electrek’s write-up of the study stresses a caveat the groups repeat: these are planned projects, so the figures do not mean all of that capacity will be built. The same piece sets the buildout against a high-growth data center scenario in which modeling projects nearly 600,000 asthma symptom cases and about 1,300 premature deaths in 2028, counting power plants, on-site gas turbines and backup diesel generators together.
Five States Hold Most of the Pipeline
Texas leads by a wide margin with 20 gigawatts, 33.2% of proposed grid-connected gas capacity; if built, the Texas projects would expand the state’s existing gas fleet by almost 25%. Louisiana follows at 6.6 gigawatts, then Pennsylvania at 4.4, Oklahoma at 3.0 and Mississippi at 2.6. Those five states account for 61% of planned additions, and gas plants are on the books in 32 states plus Washington, D.C.
The new capacity alone, the report notes, exceeds the total generating capacity of every U.S. state except Texas, California and Florida, a comparison that shows how much of the buildout rests on a single generation type.
Behind-the-Meter Plants Are Not in the Count
The 60.4 gigawatts leaves out the plants data center developers are building to run on their own. EIA requires reporting only for planned generators connected to the grid, so off-grid gas stations feeding a campus directly do not appear, and the groups say those projects could add tens of gigawatts more. The Environmental Integrity Project’s July 1 report identified at least 74 gas-fired plants, 71 new and three expansions, planned for U.S. data centers with about 143 gigawatts of capacity, 32 of them in Texas and 10 in Ohio.
Jen Duggan, the project’s executive director, said, “An industry of the future should not be chained to dirty fuels of the past.” Her group estimates those plants could emit about 662 million tons of greenhouse gases a year.
GE Vernova’s Backlog Limits What Gets Built
Planning is not construction, and the constraint is hardware. GE Vernova’s second-quarter results, released July 22, showed its gas backlog plus slot reservation agreements rising from 100 gigawatts to 116 gigawatts. CEO Scott Strazik said the company now expects “at least 125 GW of gas equipment under contract by year-end 2026.” A trade breakdown of those results splits the 116 gigawatts into 53 gigawatts of equipment backlog and 63 gigawatts of slot reservations, with annualized output of 20 gigawatts in the third quarter of 2026 rising to 24 gigawatts in 2028 and 30 gigawatts in 2030.
Who is buying matters for the 44%. Latitude Media’s analysis of EIA data, published Sept. 24, found that across 2026 to 2030 about 211 gigawatts of projects are past the earliest planning stage and 15% of that is gas. Independent developers account for 169 gigawatts, only 4% gas, while utilities account for 42 gigawatts, 59% gas. Twenty-six vertically integrated utilities have 62 gigawatts of new supply tied to data center load, 37.3 gigawatts of it gas.
Duke Energy alone has agreements with 7.6 gigawatts of data centers and is building 14 gigawatts of new generation by 2031, mostly gas, according to the same analysis. EIA’s next Electric Power Monthly, scheduled for Oct. 23, will show how much of the 60.4 gigawatts holds in the next planned-additions table.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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