With projections for developers to add a healthy amount of natural gas-fired generation in the U.S. over the next several years and data centers planning to utilize natural gas generation to power their operations, the energy sector is grappling with backlogs for natural gas turbines.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration in June said that developers plan to add 18.7 gigawatts of combined-cycle capacity to the U.S. grid by 2028, with 4.3 GW already under construction.
A large group of companies on July 15 unveiled more than $90 billion of investments in data centers, energy and power infrastructure, and workforce and artificial intelligence training projects. The announcements were tied to the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit. President Trump participated in the summit, which was held in Pittsburgh, Pa.
A number of those companies detailed plans to power data centers with natural gas.
For example, Homer City Redevelopment announced an agreement in principle for EQT Corporation to serve as HCR’s exclusive partner to source and supply the natural gas needed to power the 4.4 gigawatt natural gas facility that will serve the Homer City Energy Campus — a 3,200 acre AI and high-performance computing data center campus in Pennsylvania currently under construction and slated to begin producing power in 2027.
The Frontier Group of Companies, owner and developer of the 660-acre Shippingport Industrial Park in Pennsylvania, announced that it is converting the former 2.7 gigawatt Bruce Mansfield Power Plant into Shippingport Power Station, a significantly larger state-of-the art natural gas generation plant with new incremental onsite generation. Additionally, FGC has secured a partner to build a collocated data center facility to support America’s demand for AI infrastructure.
NextEra Energy Notes “Long Line” for Gas Turbines
NextEra Energy Chairman, President and CEO John Ketchum in June said that a few years ago it was “easy to get gas-fired generation up online and producing electricity. That’s not the same today.”
Ketchum, who made his comments at a Politico Energy Summit, noted that “nobody’s built more gas-fired generation in the last 20 years than” his company.
He said that “if we want to build a new gas-fired generation facility…we can’t get it online until 2032.”
Ketchum said that “you have to get in a long line to get a gas turbine. There’s a lot of global demand for gas turbines today – not just in the United States for all the economic expansion opportunities that we have here, but Saudi Arabia just placed a very large order, you have a lot of demand out of Asia, a lot of demand out of Western Europe as well tied to liquefied natural gas.”
Therefore, the cost and “the time to get your hands on a gas turbine has increased exponentially – it’s just supply and demand.”
He said that the price of a gas turbine has gone up threefold “just in the last 24 months and then we have a big labor issue as well.”
He noted that he had a recent conversation with the CEO of a major EPC contractor.
Ketchum noted that it takes about a thousand people to build a gas-fired generation facility.
“He has to hire six thousand people just to get to a thousand because the washout rate is so high. Why? Because he loses half of his work force to data center buildout, semiconductor chip manufacturing, industrial expansion, LNG terminals, chemical companies, you name it. The other third – because we haven’t built gas-fired generation in the last decade – doesn’t have the skill set and the muscle memory of how to do it and so all those things add to cost.”
GE Vernova Details Gas Turbine Orders
In an April 2025 conference call with investors, Scott Strazik, CEO of GE Vernova, said that in the company’s Gas Power segment, “we grew equipment orders over 30% by booking 7 gigawatts of gas turbine orders. Additionally, we secured 7 gigawatts of new slot reservation agreements. In total, our gas turbine backlog has increased to 29 gigawatts, and we also have 21 gigawatts of slot reservation agreements that are expected to convert to orders and are not yet in backlog.”
He said the company, as of April 2025, had 50 gigawatts of gas turbines under contract or with a slot reservation. “We expect to ship over 10 gigawatts of equipment in the remainder of the year and add contracts for more than two times that amount, to end the year with over 60 gigawatts between backlog and reservation agreements,” Strazik said.
“The second half of the year should see a heavier mix of combined cycle orders after a first half with more simple cycle or peaking applications, driving the dollar value of orders in the second half of the year to be substantially higher than the first half,” he said on the April 23 conference call.
“Sitting here today, ‘26 and ‘27 are largely sold out, we are approaching filling out ‘28 and starting to sign agreements for later years. I give that context to just frame that I continue to see this market normalizing to a higher-for-longer gas market. The world needs more dispatchable power generation to support economic growth and national security.”
Gas power “will provide a significant amount of the incremental dispatchable power while also being the force multiplier for more renewables where wind and solar resources make sense. With this strength, commercial activities accelerating for 2029 and 2030 deliveries, we remain focused on our fulfillment strategy of reaching 20 gigawatts of annualized deliveries in the second half of 2026 and sustaining 20 gigawatts per year, starting in 2027.”
Dora Partners & Co. CEO Details Key Factors Contributing to Backlogs
When asked to detail what he sees as the key factors contributing to backlogs for natural gas turbines being experienced by turbine manufacturers, Tony Brough, Founder and CEO of Dora Partners & Co., told Public Power Current that there multiple market factors driving record breaking order activity including, among other things, utility grade energy storage battery sites (with gas turbine backup), data center and AI development, moderate/affordable natural gas pricing climate-changing temperatures, increasing daily electrical demand and coal plant retirements.
He also pointed out that industrial gas turbine OEMs utilize many if not all of the same supply chain core component suppliers as the booming aerospace industry.
When asked how concerned a company planning to build a natural gas plant in the U.S. should be about acquiring gas turbines in a timely manner, Brough said that OEMs are “working diligently to reduce lead times… but this will not happen overnight.”
He added: “Will the gas turbine OEMs deliver on their promised delivery dates, yes very likely… but they have had to stretch out their commitment dates while they resolve the supply chain challenges.”
Brough said that U.S.-based OEMs are expanding capacity, “but each of them have been through ‘boom times’ before so they are taking a measured and careful approach to capacity additions.”
Dora Partners & Co. is an energy-focused management consulting company with clients representing some of the largest original equipment manufacturers that provide products and services in the energy sector.
EPRI Official Discusses Gas Turbines
“When you say supply chain for the gas turbine, that involves a lot of things,” said Bobby Noble, the Electric Power Research Institute’s Senior Program Manager for Gas Turbine R&D, in a recent episode of the EPRI Current podcast.
“It could be material, so thinking about where the metal is coming from, where are the ceramic coatings. But then it goes into manufacturing capabilities. It goes into so many other aspects, such as just the people, maybe your EPCs, or other trades that you need along the way, there may be delays,” he said. There are “only so many resources that can be committed at one time.”
GE Vernova “and several others have announced that they’re investing millions, hundreds of millions in manufacturing expansions,” he noted. “That will help some, but we’re not seeing the investments to where we’re going to double or triple the number of gas turbines being produced.”
Noble also provided details on how EPRI is supporting and informing the energy industry on the topic. He noted that EPRI collaborates “with OEMs, with national labs, universities, you name it. And so some of the things that we’re able to do right now is help the utilities, help those that are looking to purchase their next gas turbine, understand what are their options.”
Report Details Factors that Could Limit Gas Turbine Growth
A recent report from Wood Mackenzie found that despite surging power demand, the gas turbine market could experience "turbo lag" in the next 15 years due to manufacturing constraints, rising costs, and competition from renewables.
The report, titled "Turbocharged vs turbo lag: The new landscape for gas-fired power", projects that around 890 GW of new gas-fired generation capacity will be added globally between 2025 to 2040.
Combined, China and the US average 47% of global annual additions from 2025 to 2040. Other markets and regions, including Southeast Asia, India, and the EU27 range from 53% of global annual additions from 2025 to 2040.
However, several factors may limit growth, particularly in the near-term:
• Manufacturing capacity constraints could delay new gas plant construction. Wood Mackenzie calculates around 90% utilization of gas turbine manufacturing capacity in 2025, which could cause some US developers to find that 2030 or beyond is the earliest opportunity to bring new combined cycle capacity online.
• In the US, skyrocketing capital costs and power market prices below the cost of new gas generation pose challenges.
• In Asia, high imported gas costs limit gas to a peaking role despite strong power demand growth.
• In Europe, decarbonization goals are pushing unabated gas to the margins by 2040.
