The United States is building twice as much natural gas as China, giving Washington a leg up in the race to power data centers running artificial intelligence, according to a new report.
The amount of natural gas projects under development in the U.S. in the first half of this year was already 50% higher than the total for 2025, a boom directly linked to the rapid deployment of AI, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the nonprofit organization Global Energy Monitor.
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The group estimated that about 189 gigawatts of the new gas-fired capacity in development during the first half of 2026 is planned for data centers. This is nearly double the total in development all of last year, around 97 gigawatts. For comparison, one gigawatt is estimated to power about 750,000 homes.
In total, there were about 378 gigawatts of gas power under development for the first half of this year, including projects in pre-construction and announcement phases.
While China had a narrow lead for under-construction natural gas projects last year, the U.S. is pulling ahead. U.S. natural gas projects under construction grew by 76% between January and June, hitting 52 gigawatts’ worth of new power. About 16.9 gigawatts of this is intended directly for data centers. In China, only about 24 gigawatts of natural gas are under construction.
At this rate, the U.S. is building twice as much gas-fired capacity as China. According to the report, the U.S. also has nearly three times as much natural gas in development, including projects in pre-construction or simply announced.
The report comes soon after President Donald Trump claimed the U.S. holds a significant lead over the Chinese Communist Party in the AI race. He attributed this in part to his administration’s push for AI developers to supply their own power to ensure that the rapid deployment of AI will not raise electricity bills.
Most of the new natural gas capacity under development in the U.S. is in the pre-construction and announcement phases and is subject to delays due to multi-year lead times for key materials, such as turbines, and regulatory backlogs.
The report found many developers are seeking to get around these delays by forgoing gas turbines and instead using engines, which are smaller, less efficient, and faster to install. In fact, nearly one-quarter of the gas power projects related to data centers saw engine capacity more than triple in the last month.
Still, delays appear inevitable.
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The new report estimated that about two-thirds of gas-fired capacity under development globally, including more than half of projects tied to data centers, don’t have any turbine or engine manufacturer named for their projects.
“It is nearly impossible nowadays to guess what is a pie-in-the-sky proposal, and what has a real chance of getting built,” said Jenny Martos, the project manager for the global oil and gas plant tracker at Global Energy Monitor. “The projects that eventually clear those hurdles are paying top dollar for turbines, locking in emissions, and pushing up electricity prices.”
