US AI Boom Needs $110 Billion of New Power Plants, Moody’s Says
America’s data center boom will need $110 billion to build 45 gigawatts of new power generation through 2030, according to an analysis by Moody’s Ratings.
The vast majority of that new supply, more than 30 gigawatts, will come from natural gas-fired units and represents about 4 billion cubic feet of incremental gas supply, according to a report Monday. The bulk of the remaining supply will come from solar and energy storage, with nuclear restarts accounting for less than 5%. One gigawatt is roughly equivalent to the output of a traditional nuclear reactor.
The projection is based on the International Energy Agency’s forecast that data centers will consume 426 terawatt-hours in 2030, doubling its share of US electricity usage to 10% from 2025 levels.
Moody’s forecast quantifies what it would take to produce enough megawatts to feed the data centers needed for artificial intelligence and cloud computing that are driving the biggest expansion in US electricity demand in decades, fueling a massive buildout of infrastructure to support it. The White House has called the AI race a national imperative, backing some of the world’s biggest companies as they compete for potentially enormous profits. But the buildout comes at a cost, drawing opposition from Americans worried that the average household and business is subsidizing AI through rising power bills, pollution, water shortages and threats to public lands and private property.
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