Michael Thomas in Cleanview Newsletter outlines the central challenge for AI Data Centers as they ramp up.
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.
… 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.
As of the first six months of 2026, the United States had 378 GW of gas-fired power capacity in development, up 50 percent in just six months, according to Global Energy Monitor. Of that, 189 GW was tied directly to data centers. The U.S. now accounts for roughly one-third of all planned gas-fired capacity worldwide, while Texas is adding new proposals faster than anywhere else.
However, according to a recent report from nonpartisan global news outlet Semafor, “it remains unclear if all of those plants will ultimately be built, since most projects are in early development and the demand surge has led to a bottleneck for gas turbines, with some suppliers warning of yearslong lead times.”
Above, a local Colorado TV report on one jet engine builder that is repurposing advanced jet engines to power AI. No mention of the implications for carbon emissions.
Colorado Sun also has reporting on the same company, Boom Supersonic’s plan to build jet engines as power plants for Data Centers. The engines were developed to power a proposed supersonic airliner, but the company has identified a market in the energy hungry AI space. (there’s room for a whole other post on supersonic flight and impacts on the Ozone layer, but I’ll hold off on that)
The report quotes Blake Scholl, Boom’s CEO and founder, saying. “This is a 42-megawatt natural gas turbine that runs on that same supersonic technology, which means it’s used to being hot and it doesn’t need cooling water. Not a drop.”
Scholl says, by powering his turbines with natural gas on the back of flatbed trucks, the company will be able to generate enough power to run data centers, hospitals and other large electricity users. And he claims it will all be done without causing problems for data-center neighbors.
“So, the AI data center will be able to create its own electricity, do it completely waterless, and it’s also going to be quiet,” Scholl said. “Let’s remember this turbine was built by the same team that made Sonic Boom go away entirely.”
The New York Times has a long report this morning on how jet engines are being scavenged from retired Airliners to be shake and bake power plants, pointing out that engineers are solving for the speed-to-power problem, but ignoring some longer term realities.
The speed at which jet engines can be quickly turned into generators “is the main consideration today,” said Professor Paniagua-Perez of Purdue. “But in a year or two, I think people will start caring more about fuel cost and efficiency,” he said. “Emissions will also become very important.”
Concerns like these, however, don’t appear to be affecting demand.
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Former DOE official Jigar Shah has been continually pointing out that these kinds of jury-rigged power plants run into a host of problems even aside from climate considerations – for instance, the availability of natural gas at the 99.999% reliability that they require.
Jigar has mentioned specifically Elon Musk’s “Colossus” project outside of Memphis as a poster child for the quick and dirty approach to AI power. That project has been a black eye for the entire industry, and a textbook example of short term thinking, and how NOT to go about it.
FYI: I worked most of my whole (business) life in data centers, and they all had their own backup power systems. The last one I worked in had two 1 MW diesel generators and one high speed 500 KW gas turbine. My employer eventually got rid of the turbine because it required much more maintenance to keep it functional. Just before I left, one of the 1 MW diesels was replaced with a 2 MW diesel. The business plan included us selling power back to the grid when required.
The statement that these jet-powered electricity sources for data centers use no water at all is a misdirection. The issue of water use in data centers is for cooling the computer processors, not the power generators.
I’m not a fan of building lots of jet engines to push wealthy people, in planes adding more pollution at 60,000 feet. Then I started looking at the first video and the guy was misleading on too many things in a row.
Solving energy crisis? Aero turbines built to fly in the upper atmosphere are not what we need on the ground, they pollute more and are less efficient than the bigger turbines designed for combined-cycle power plants. The energy “crisis” is simply that there’s a bubble in data center construction and he seems to want in in grabbing some of the reckless spending going on before it stops.
This bit really annoyed me, though: “And it’s also going to be quiet. Let’s remember this turbine was built by the same team that made sonic booms go away entirely.” That is deliberately and falsely conflating two different things: the sound levels the turbines produce in operation, and the entirely different way they reflect the sonic boom away from reaching the ground when the plane is 60,000 feet up.
The design Boom Aerospace is counting on for over-land permits is based on weather conditions and on not flying too much faster than the speed of sound – taking advantage of “Mach cutoff” which DOES NOT silence the roar of the jet turbine, it simply REFLECTS the sonic boom created by the exterior of the aircraft off of a layer in the troposphere rather than the shockwave reaching the surface. Their claim to quietness at supersonic speed has absolutely nothing to do with the operating sound levels of the turbines, especially at ground level.
And from some of their materials I think he also exaggerates the in-flight time saved over land – again, because the Mach Cutoff effect depends on not going too much faster than sound over land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_cutoff “Mach cutoff is a phenomenon of high-altitude supersonic flight in which the sonic boom generated at speeds not too far above Mach 1 never reaches the ground.”