The U.S. needs to add the equivalent of 71.3 Bcf/d of power generation in the coming few years, according to generator NextEra Energy.

The electrons total 450 gigawatts (GW).

“That is not a small number,” Matt Pawlowski, vice president, transmission development, for the Florida-headquartered company, said at a summit on powering AI at the Hamm Institute for American Energy in Oklahoma City.

“That’s what we're looking at as far as load growth between now and 2030 U.S.-wide,” he said.

The U.S. currently averages between 440 and 490 GW per day. Of total U.S. power generation, about 200 GW is derived from gas-fired plants, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Energy securities and other analysts have estimated between 8 Bcf/d and 12 Bcf/d of additional methane will be called on to power AI data centers in the coming few years.

The low figure would produce a net 50 GW; the high end, 76 GW. (Net electrons from typical gas-fired power generation is roughly 0.1584 Bcf/d per gigawatt.)

The high end is the number NextEra is forecasting.

“We expect 75 GW of new gas [generation] to come online between now and 2030,” John Ketchum, NextEra chairman, president and CEO, reported in an April 23 investor call.

NextEra’s generation fleet is comprised of gas-fired, nuclear, wind and solar. It also has a battery fleet as backup power and owns transmission. An unregulated energy operator across the U.S., NextEra is the parent of regulated utility Florida Power & Light.

“So we are in every aspect of the energy-infrastructure space,” Palowski said at the summit.

Ketchum said of demand growth during the April 23 call, “Frankly, it's unlike anything we've ever seen since the end of World War II.”

The 75 GW of new gas-fired power-generation that will be needed between now and 2030 is “nowhere close to meeting the over 450 GW of total generation [from any and all sources] we believe are needed,” Ketchum said.

At the summit, Duke Austin, president and CEO of Houston-based turnkey engineering company Quanta Services, said five utility customers have already put in firm orders for 100 GW.

The demand is real, he emphasized. “We see it early …. The demand is greater than anyone sees from our standpoint … . We see it coming at us daily.”

David Dardis, an executive vice president at Baltimore-based nuclear operator Constellation Energy, noted the company is buying the U.S.’ largest independent gas-fired power generator, Houston-based Calpine Corp., which is expected to close later this year in a $16.4 billion deal.

“Obviously that's a strategic pivot for us,” Dardis said. But “we saw the writing on the wall for the future of the energy needs for this country.”

Constellation also recently signed a deal with Microsoft to restart Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

Turbines, skilled labor needed

A concern, though, is that the cost of adding gas-fired generation is rising, according to Ketchum. “That's because gas turbines are in short supply and in high demand,” he told investors.

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Also the workers aren’t there. It’s “proving difficult to reestablish the highly skilled workforce required to build these complex power plants,” Ketchum said.

Newbuild gas plants “rely on approximately 1,000 workers across dozens of niche trades.” Contractors report “high washout rates” and some workers leaving for higher-paying jobs.

Those competing jobs include in the buildout of the power-demand growth sources themselves—data centers and in chip manufacturing—he added, in addition to LNG export terminals and other industrial facilities.

“Other workers are showing up to job sites without the necessary skills,” Ketchum said.

The combination of these factors is “why the cost to build a gas-fired plant has tripled in the last few years and is poised to increase even further due to tariff exposure,” he said.

Quanta’s Austin said at the summit that when it comes to whether it has sufficient skilled labor, “the answer can't be 'no.' That's not going to be good enough.”

Quanta is currently adding 4,000 employees a year on both data-center jobs and power-generation jobs, he said.

Clearing the bottleneck

Maynard Holt, founder and CEO of capital research and advisory firm Veriten, said the Trump administration’s work on “getting rid of regulations that are in the way of people implementing things” will help the power buildout.

“But I do think people have a strong sense of there is a bottleneck around [that] we need more turbines. We want to build more plants. We have to have the labor that can do all that stuff,” Holt said.

Pablo Koziner, chief commercial officer for turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, said a comment earlier in the day that natural gas is a Swiss Army knife of energy “couldn’t be a more true statement.”

The company works in renewables, nuclear and natural gas. It has 7,000 gas turbines and 57,000 wind turbines in operation globally.

“When you think about the speed and scale that's required and the firm type of power that's required to enable AI, it squares center on more gas-powered products,” Koziner said.

The company has accelerated its heavy-duty gas-turbine production globally. “We have 50 GW of gas turbines either under sale with a purchase agreement or under reservation,” he said.

Southern Co. Chairman, President and CEO Chris Womack said the Atlanta-based power operator is planning to add 10 GW.

That doesn’t all come online in a week, he noted. Customers “don't need 10 GW tomorrow. You may need 500 MW or whatever the number is. But you're going to wrap your way up to that 10 gigs,” Womack said.

Then there’s the task of bringing the power online.

“There will be power, okay,” Womack said. “There will be power. Yes, there are things we have to work through, have to understand, have to make sure all the resources are available, but we're going to make sure there will be power.”

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