The United States runs on gas powered generators.
As of 2022, the US had nearly 1,000 gas-fired plants, which was already more than the next nine countries combined. Under returning president Donald Trump, the country’s embrace of high-carbon power has only accelerated, as energy developers abandon environmentally-friendly projects like off-shore wind farms in favor of more noxious gas- and coal-powered facilities.
As if our rapidly warming world wasn’t being choked by enough smog, the AI boom is now adding even more fuel to the proverbial fire. According to a new analysis by the Environment America Research and Policy Center, first flagged by Electrek, the buildout of more AI infrastructure will come with a 44 percent increase in gas-fired generator capacity over the next four years.
That’s a stunning rise of nearly 20 gigawatts by 2030, compared to the country’s current gas generator capacity of 41.8 gigawatts, a milestone which took centuries of development — and untold tons of carbon exhaust — to reach.
As Electrek notes, the planned expansion of gas capacity exceeds the combined output of every single US state except for Texas, California, and Florida. And as more noisome gas facilities appear on the American horizon, planned green energy installations are being axed — with a 34 percent decrease in planned wind farm capacity since December of 2025.
“The data is clear: surging electricity demand to power data centers is putting our nation’s transition to clean energy at risk,” chief operating officer for The Public Interest Network Andre Delattre told Electrek. “Given the lifespans of new gas plants, these facilities could lock America into decades of continued fossil fuel dependence. Any potential benefits of data centers won’t mean anything if we destroy the planet in the process.”
Making matters worse, Environment America’s capacity forecast doesn’t account for planned gas plants which will be hooked up directly to data center facilities themselves, like the turbines powering Elon Musk’s 1.2 gigawatt data center, which are currently choking poor majority-Black communities in Memphis, Tennessee.
It’s difficult to say for sure how much more capacity these bolt-on reactors account for, but if present-day practices are any indication, the air in the US is about to get a lot filthier.
More on data centers: Retired Air Force Colonel Warns Americans That It’s Dangerous to Live Near Data Centers Because You Could Be Targeted or Killed
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