What is actually in the power build pipeline
Forecasts of AI electricity demand are answered in public argument with promises of new generation. This counts the stations that already carry a commissioning date in the future.
Key figures
473 stations carry a commissioning year after 2026, totalling 523.7 GW.
Gas is 321.1 GW of that pipeline, across 309 stations.
For comparison, 775.7 GW of existing gas is already 25 years or older, more than twice the gas in the pipeline.
The size of the pipeline
Across the whole PowerAtlas record, 473 stations carry a commissioning year later than 2026. Together they come to 523.7 GW. That is the visible pipeline: projects far enough along to have a name, a location and a date attached to them in open data.
It is a floor rather than a ceiling. Projects announced without a date, and projects not yet announced, are not in this count.
What it is made of
| Fuel | Pipeline capacity (GW) |
|---|---|
| Gas | 321.1 |
| Coal | 103.2 |
| Nuclear | 95.7 |
| Hydro | 2.2 |
| Oil | 1.4 |
| Wind | 0.1 |
| Other | 0.0 |
| Solar | 0.0 |
Gas is the largest single block at 321.1 GW. Dispatchable capacity is what the AI-demand argument turns on, because a data centre contracts for availability rather than for energy.
Where it is being built
| Country | Pipeline capacity (GW) |
|---|---|
| United States of America | 101.4 |
| Vietnam | 82.7 |
| China | 54.9 |
| Russia | 28.0 |
| Bangladesh | 22.7 |
| Indonesia | 20.3 |
| India | 16.6 |
| Canada | 13.4 |
Pipeline against the ageing fleet
The pipeline adds 321.1 GW of gas. The existing fleet already has 775.7 GW past 25 years. On these two numbers the visible pipeline does not replace the ageing capacity, let alone add to it.
Two caveats hold this in place. Old capacity does not have to retire on schedule, and a country can meet load growth with wind, solar and storage instead of like-for-like gas. Neither is a question a plant register can answer.
Sources and method
- Pipeline and fleet counted from PowerAtlas on 2026-09-25.
- Pipeline means any station whose recorded commissioning year is later than 2026. Capacity is the recorded installed capacity of those stations.
- No assumption is made about how many of these projects reach commissioning.
- Global Power Plant Database, World Resources Institute, the largest single upstream source for the station records used here.
- Global Oil and Gas Plant Tracker and the coal and nuclear trackers, Global Energy Monitor, which supply several thousand further station records and much of the status and commissioning data.
- Capacity values are reconciled across the source records, Wikidata nameplate capacity and, for Brazil, the ANEEL SIGA official registry.