The Power Plant Is Now Part of the Data Center

Three separate items landed in the last week of August 2026. Individually each is a news story. Together they describe a single structural change in how these projects get built — and where a community still has a say.

One. Global Energy Monitor counted 189 GW of U.S. gas-fired capacity in development tied specifically to data centers, up from 97 GW at the end of 2025 — nearly a doubling in six months (GEM, Aug 25).

Two. Ceres modeled the water consumed by the power plants that serve data centers in the seven states holding about half the country's fleet, and put it at roughly 3.4 trillion gallons of freshwater a year — a figure that dwarfs on-site cooling, which is the only number most hearings ever discuss (Ceres, Aug 25).

Three. EPA moved to eliminate the federal requirement that states publicize and take comment on minor-source air permits — the permit class that covers many data centers and the generation built alongside them (New York Times, Aug 25).

The through-line: for a growing share of projects, the power plant is no longer something the utility builds somewhere else. It is on the parcel, in the same application, owned by the same parties. That moves the decision out of the rate case and into the air permit — which is the exact process now losing its public-notice floor.

Part 1 — The gas number, and its honest caveats

GEM's Global Oil and Gas Plant Tracker now counts 378 GW of U.S. gas capacity across the announced, pre-construction, and construction phases, up from 252 GW at the end of 2025 — a 50% increase in six months. Of that, 189 GW is tied to data centers. U.S. gas capacity actually under construction reached 52 GW, against China's 24 GW; on the full development pipeline, the U.S. now leads roughly three to one.

Texas alone accounts for 122 GW in development — 31% of the national total, up 51% in six months — with 77 GW of that designated for data centers.

Now the caveats, which matter more than the headline if you are the one standing up at a hearing:

About 86% of the U.S. pipeline is announced or pre-construction, not under construction. An announcement is a press release, not a turbine.
Nearly a quarter of the data-center-linked gas projects have no named start year at all.
Two-thirds of global gas capacity in development has no identified turbine manufacturer, and turbine lead times now run years. GEM logged 45 GW of announced and pre-construction capacity slipping in the first half of 2026 alone.

GEM's own project manager, Jenny Martos, framed the tracker's limits plainly: this wave of proposals is "running headlong into the hurdles of an already tight gas market."

Use the caveats in both directions. When a developer presents new on-site generation as settled, ask which phase it is in, who is supplying the turbines, and what the contracted delivery date is. When an opponent cites 189 GW as though it were poured concrete, the same question applies. The number that belongs in a hearing record is the phase, not the total.

Part 2 — Pike County is the template, not the exception

The clearest example of the new structure is the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Piketon, Ohio — already tracked in our project dossiers.

The shape of the deal:

8 GW-IT of capacity leased by OpenAI from SB Energy, a SoftBank Group company, under a 20-year lease (OpenAI, Aug 18).
9.2 GW of new on-site natural gas generation, funded in part through $33.3 billion tied to the U.S.–Japan Strategic Trade and Investment Agreement. The generating assets are to be owned by the U.S. government, with SB Energy operating them.
The land is federal — DOE's former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a uranium enrichment site with its own long contamination record.
The financing is circular. OpenAI invested $500 million in SB Energy in January 2026; Nvidia announced a $1.5 billion investment this month and is the campus's compute provider. The tenant and the chip supplier are both investors in the landlord.

If that were a utility-built plant, there would be a rate case, a docket number, and a ratepayer-impact figure a commissioner has to look at. Here, much of that is displaced. We made the same point about Amazon's 7.65 GW gas plant in Pecos County: when the generation is behind the meter, the ratepayer argument thins out and the leverage moves to the air permit and the local land-use process.

Two doors are still wide open at Piketon, and they are worth naming because they generalize:

The transmission still gets sited publicly. AEP Ohio's roughly 50-mile, 765 kV Piketon Area Improvements Project runs through Pike, Jackson, and Gallia counties and goes to the Ohio Power Siting Board — a contested proceeding with intervenor rights, regardless of who owns the gas plant.
The air permit still exists. Behind-the-meter generation is still a stationary source. Which brings us to the third item.

Part 3 — The water nobody meters

Ceres' Water Behind the Watts looked at Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio, and Arizona — about half the U.S. data center fleet — and found:

Roughly 3.4 trillion gallons of freshwater a year associated with the electricity those data centers use, which Ceres compares to about 12 times the combined annual use of Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C.
78% of electricity in those states comes from plants that need water to operate.
66% of those water-using plants sit in areas rated medium-high to extremely high water stress.
By 2030, the associated annual withdrawals could reach 4.1 to 7.6 trillion gallons.

One precision note, because it will be the first thing a developer's consultant says: withdrawal and consumption are not the same number. A once-through cooled plant withdraws enormous volumes and returns most of it (warmer); a cooling-tower plant withdraws less and evaporates most of what it takes. Coverage of this report uses both words. When you cite it, cite the metric — and when a company gives you a water figure, ask which one it is, and whether it covers generation or only the building.

On disclosure, the gap is stark. Meta is the only hyperscaler that reports indirect water embedded in purchased electricity, and its 2024 figure was more than 20 times its direct data-center water consumption — rising every year since 2021. Amazon told Latitude Media it tracks the number but has not published it, citing the absence of a reporting standard. Neither Google nor Microsoft said whether they track it at all (Latitude Media, Aug 26).

So when a project promises a closed-loop cooling system and a modest gallons- per-day figure, that promise is real — and it is describing the small half of the footprint. The question that gets you the other half is: where does this facility's power come from, and how much water does that plant use?

Part 4 — The door that is closing

On July 1, 2026, EPA proposed removing the minimum federal public participation requirements for minor New Source Review permitting in state implementation plans; it published in the Federal Register on July 7, and the comment period closed August 21, 2026 (EPA news release; Federal Register, Jul 7).

Minor NSR is the permit class that covers new minor stationary sources and minor modifications to existing ones — in practice, many data centers, their backup generator fleets, and emissions-increasing additions at existing power plants. It is the process where a resident first learns a facility is coming.

EPA's framing is that it is returning a procedural choice to the states. Administrator Lee Zeldin: state and local authorities "closest to issues should make permitting decisions, not Washington." The agency says emission standards themselves are unchanged.

That framing is worth taking literally, because it defines where the fight now is. The proposal does not forbid public notice. It removes the federal floor requiring it. Every state keeps the authority to require notice and comment in its own minor NSR program — and after this rule, that becomes a state-by-state decision made by your state air agency, not a national guarantee.

Roughly 200 environmental, health, and community organizations, plus more than a dozen states, filed in opposition during the comment window (NYT, Aug 25). That window is now shut. What is not shut is the state one.

Meanwhile the generation rules are moving the same direction: CEOs of generation-and-transmission cooperatives, including NRECA's Jim Matheson, publicly pressed EPA this month to fully repeal the 2024 greenhouse-gas standards for gas plants, arguing the 40% capacity-factor threshold and carbon-capture requirement are "untenable" given data-center load growth (Utility Dive, Aug 2026).

What this changes about your hearing

Ask first whether the generation is grid-connected or behind the meter. The answer determines whether there is a rate case to intervene in at all. If there isn't, the air permit and local land use are the whole board — start there on day one, not after the first hearing.
Ask your state air agency, in writing, whether it will keep public notice and comment in its minor NSR program regardless of what the federal floor says. Get the answer on the record before a permit is pending, not after. This is the single highest-leverage thing to do in response to the EPA proposal, and it is a state-level ask.
Ask for the water number that covers generation, not just the building — and pin down withdrawal versus consumption. Our impact calculator gives you a defensible per-facility estimate to bring as a baseline.
Follow the transmission. Even where the plant is private, the lines usually are not. Your state PUC or siting board is a public docket with intervenor rights.
Check the paper trail before you argue. Every dossier on the project tracker lists where that project's permits and filings actually live, and distinguishes a public register from a pre-built search — because citing a search result at a hearing is how a resident loses one.

The old script assumed the utility built the power plant and the community argued about the data center. Increasingly it is one application, one set of owners, and one permit — the air permit. Find out today whether your state intends to keep telling you when one is filed.

The Power Plant Is Now Part of the Data Center — and the Public Notice for It Is Being Deleted

Part 1 — The gas number, and its honest caveats

Part 2 — Pike County is the template, not the exception

Part 3 — The water nobody meters

Part 4 — The door that is closing

What this changes about your hearing

Sources