Generating a Problem: Turbine Builders Unable to Keep Up with Power Demands

OKLAHOMA CITY—The U.S. is awash with cheap natural gas, and the booming artificial intelligence (AI) sector wants it to power its data centers.

Energy producers and the tech sector are working together to meet demand; however, they are hitting a bottleneck more often than not: the availability of turbines to convert natural gas into electrons.

Takajiro Ishikawa, president of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America (MHIA), said the U.S. and the rest of the world have been focused on wind and solar energy development over the last decade. During that time frame, companies that build gas-fired and combined-cycle generators lost much of their manufacturing capacity.

Now, as energy demand ramps up thanks to AI data centers and re-shoring industrialization, the calls for generation is also booming.

“We’re seeing the surge in demand, and the figures that we hear every day—including the panels that we heard this morning and the afternoon—it’s really scary,” Ishikawa said. “We don’t know how to scale that up, because the whole supply chain is gone.”

Ishikawa spoke as a panelist April 24 at the Powering AI: Global Leadership Summit, hosted by Oklahoma State University’s Hamm Institute for American Energy. He was joined by Venture Global Co-Chairman Bob Pender and Kalin Peshov, chairman of the management board for GBS, an infrastructure company based in Bulgaria.

The problem of meeting turbine demand is not just Mitsubishi’s; competitors are likely facing the same issues, he said. Two years ago, two-thirds of capital investment in power generation were going to wind and solar.

Most tech companies also want their power supplies to be as carbon-free as possible, meaning Mitsubishi and other manufacturers are ramping up their CO₂-capture capabilities as well.

His company is expanding, but the challenge will be matching the boom currently happening in AI technology.

“We are committed to serving the needs of American industry, whether it be the utilities or the oil and gas companies that are also getting into the (power) industry,” Ishikawa said. “But the magnitude and the speed that they are wanting the technology is just overwhelming.”

Venture Global’s Pender said his LNG company was in an advantageous spot in regards to power generation. The company’s facilities at Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines run on electric power generated on-site.

“We’ve made our orders way in advance and before most of the AI guys came along and tried to snap up a lot of turbines,” Pender said. “So, we’re not concerned about some of those critical pieces because of advanced commitments of capital and by advanced planning.”