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RBN Energy: tech giants increasingly turning to natural gas to power data centers.
The pace of announcements for planned data centers accelerated in 2024 and has continued to gather steam in 2025, with natural gas-fired power plants emerging as a frequent choice, along with nuclear power, to provide the around-the-clock electricity that large-scale data centers want and need. In today’s RBN blog, the first in a series, we’ll detail plans by several well-known energy firms to construct new gas-fired plants that would produce electricity specifically for data centers.
et’s start with some data-center basics. As we discussed in Storm Front, a data center (see photo below) is the home for hundreds or even thousands of networked computers that process, store and share data. Data centers — many of them owned and operated by tech giants — are among the most energy-intensive building types, consuming up to 50 times the energy per square foot of a typical commercial office building, with electrical demand at larger facilities ranging from 100 megawatts (MW) to 2,000 MW. (For perspective, as we noted in Just Can’t Get Enough, a city the size of Lubbock, TX, — population 267,000 — only requires about 700 MW.) Demand for data centers has grown exponentially with the expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, which require far more computational power — and energy — than conventional Google searches.
The Interior of an Amazon Data Center. Source: Amazon
Why Natural Gas?
As we noted in Dive In, the main reason firms are considering natural gas to power their data centers is that it is a consistent source of round-the-clock power and can be deployed at scale, usually within a reasonable period of time. Recent headlines for power deals indicate that tech firms are willing to pay up for power — as long as it is reliable — so while gas generation is relatively cheap, that’s more of an added benefit rather than the key feature.
Importantly, gas-fired generation generally can be deployed relatively quickly, allowing for solutions that are quick and nimble. A case in point is a data center in Memphis, TN, where 14 mobile gas-fired generators were brought in to help power a 150-MW facility being developed by Elon Musk’s xAI. (We’ll discuss this development and mobile generators in more detail in Part 2.) In contrast, while the buzz around nuclear is surging due to its reliability and the fact that it doesn’t produce GHGs, it is more expensive to build and has higher hurdles to clear than gas, with years of permitting headaches and construction in the best of circumstances (see We’ll Be Together).
