Jason Fordney

Gotta love the power markets, where it costs $800 million to get negative prices.

Many data centers claim to use clean energy to power their operations. But in a report we published today, we found that’s increasingly not true. Instead data centers are using natural gas—and doing so in very strange ways. It can now take as long as 7 years to connect a data center to the power grid. Beginning about a year ago, developers began pursuing new power strategies. Rather than wait, many data centers are now building their own power plants. In what we believe is the most comprehensive analysis of this trend to date, we identified 46 data centers with a combined capacity of 56 GW that plan to build their own power "behind-the-meter." That represents roughly 30% of all planned data center capacity in the United States, according to Cleanview's project tracker. In the last year, this trend has gone from niche to mainstream. 90% of the projects we identified—representing approximately 50 GW—were announced in 2025 alone. When we began this research, we were skeptical of many of these projects—as all analysts should be. Data center developers often pursue multiple projects with the intention of only building one (the "phantom project" phenomenon). Turbine manufacturers have said lead times for their equipment now stretch as long as 5-7 years. But we think much of this capacity is likely to come online soon. What makes our report unique is that we didn't rely on press releases, which show what developers say they are going to build. Instead we tracked down actual equipment deals and permits showing site plans. This revealed a very different—and surprising—story. Most of the press releases we found mentioned "all of the above" strategies that include renewables. But ~75% of the generation equipment we could identify (23 GW) was natural gas-powered. Data centers aren't planning to use your typical gas turbines either—hence why many are able to install them this year or next year. Developers are instead turning to: - Mobile gas generators strapped to semitrucks - Aeroderivative turbines originally designed for aircraft and warships - Reciprocating engines that ramp fast, but are less efficient - Refurbished turbines acquired from industrial operations We even came across a company that typically sells cruise ship engines that struck a deal to power a data center. On the surface this makes no sense. These are less efficient technologies and the power will cost far more. But an AI data center can earn as much as $10-12 billion per GW. Getting online a few years early can result in a windfall. I track data centers and power projects for a living and all of this shocked me. The public narrative is that data centers are waiting for grid connections and 5-7 year turbine backlogs. But that narrative is lagging what is actually happening on the ground in rural counties across the country. I'm planning to write much more about this. But in the meantime, you can head to Cleanview's website to get the full report.