Share of utility-scale installed capacity, by source
This interactive map and sortable table show every utility-scale natural gas power plant in the United States, all 2,823 plants of 1 MW or larger whose primary energy source is natural gas, color-coded by technology: combined cycle (630), combustion turbine (1,013), steam turbine (452), reciprocating engine (576) and fuel cell (155). Natural gas is the largest source of US electricity and the largest fleet on this site, at roughly 582 GW of active and standby capacity. Plants are shown across all statuses: active (1,976), standby (104), in development (68) and decommissioned (675), and most new generation proposed in the US today is still gas. Together, the 1,976 active natural gas plants have a combined capacity of about 575,497 MW (~575 GW), with a further 59,564 MW in development, more than any other fuel on this site.
Capacity is what is installed; generation is what actually ran. Natural Gas holds 43.36% of US utility-scale generating capacity and produced 40.75% of the electricity in 2025, an implied capacity factor of 35.9% on a nameplate basis. Nuclear is the extreme case in one direction, at 7.30% of capacity for 17.70% of generation; solar is the extreme in the other, at 12.73% for 6.67%.
Sources, basis and how the totals reconcile
Sources. Generation is EIA Electric Power Monthly, Table 1.1, Net Generation by Energy Source: Total (All Sectors), annual 2025 row. EIA marks 2025 and 2026 values as preliminary; 2024 and earlier are final, so these shares may be revised.
Basis. Both charts cover utility-scale plants of 1 MW or larger, generating sources only. Battery storage is excluded from the capacity chart because it shifts power rather than producing it, and estimated small-scale rooftop solar (93,148 GWh in 2025) is excluded from the generation chart so the two stay comparable.
Totals. The generation slices sum to 4,434,820 GWh. EIA’s published net total is 4,429,502 GWh, being that figure less 5,320 GWh of net pumped-storage hydro, which EIA reports as a negative because pumping consumes more electricity than generation returns, and a further 2 GWh that EIA attributes to independent rounding. Pumped storage is left out of the pie because a negative value cannot be drawn as a slice. Percentages use largest-remainder rounding at two decimal places so each chart adds to 100.00%.
Category notes. EIA reports wind, biomass and geothermal as one 526,246 GWh category; the split here carries a one-unit adjustment on wind so the three reconcile to that published total. Biomass covers wood and wood waste, black liquor, landfill gas, sludge waste, agricultural byproducts and biogenic municipal solid waste. Other fossil gas is blast furnace gas, gaseous propane and other manufactured waste gases; Other is hydrogen, non-biogenic municipal solid waste, batteries, purchased steam, sulfur and tire-derived fuel. One definitional seam is worth knowing: EIA-860 files gaseous propane under petroleum products, while Table 1.1 files it under other fossil gas, so the same fuel sits in the Petroleum slice on the capacity chart and the Other fossil gas slice on the generation chart. Only one 2.3 MW plant is affected.
Share of utility-scale electricity generated, by source
EIA preliminary data
Natural gas is the grid’s swing producer and shows the deepest daily swing of any large source. Combined-cycle units follow load through the day and simple-cycle peakers add output for the late-afternoon and evening peak, then most of the fleet backs down overnight.
Method: this is a modeled profile, not metered data. The 24-hour mean of 35.9% is the implied annual capacity factor, calculated as 2025 generation from EIA Electric Power Monthly Table 1.1 divided by the nameplate capacity of the active fleet on this page multiplied by 8,760 hours. EIA’s own published capacity factors use net summer capacity as the denominator and therefore run higher. The hourly shape applies the documented operating behaviour of this technology to that mean and is indicative rather than measured; metered hourly output would come from the EIA Hourly Electric Grid Monitor, which is not yet wired into this page.
| # | Plant | Type | State | Nearest city | Operator | Status | Capacity | Online |
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The efficient workhorse: a combustion turbine’s hot exhaust is recovered to raise steam for a second, steam turbine. Combined-cycle plants run much of the day and hold the most capacity of any gas type.
Simple-cycle combustion turbines and reciprocating engines start in minutes to meet demand spikes and back up wind and solar. Fuel cells are a small, very clean niche. Older gas-fired steam turbines are gradually retiring.
Natural gas is the largest source of US electricity (~40%+ of generation) and the largest fleet on this site at roughly 580 GW. Most new capacity proposed today is still gas, so this is also where most in-development plants are.
Any utility-scale plant (1 MW or larger) with at least one generator whose primary energy source is natural gas (code NG). That yields 2,823 plants. This map covers generation that serves the US grid, so plants built behind the meter to power a single customer, such as the gas turbines at xAI’s Colossus data centres and Crusoe’s Stargate campus, are not included even where their capacity is documented. A plant’s capacity is the sum of every natural gas generator on the matching EIA sheet, so an operating plant includes units temporarily out of service, which reports installed capacity rather than whatever happened to be running when EIA compiled the file. Type is set by the prime mover carrying most of the plant’s capacity. EIA files fuel cells under a catch-all “Other Natural Gas” code; this map separates them as their own type. Standby covers three EIA states: plants held in reserve, plants out of service but expected back within a year, and plants out of service with no expected return, the last accounting for about 1,830 MW here. Separately, about 31,560 MW of gas units have been retired inside 262 plants that still operate, and appears nowhere in these figures; counting it takes total retired US gas capacity from the roughly 71,400 MW in the decommissioned records to about 103,000 MW. Where a site burned more than one fuel it can appear on more than one page, so capacity should not be summed across pages. Filtering on the primary fuel excludes coal or oil plants that merely co-fire gas.
Combined cycle pairs a combustion turbine with a steam turbine that recovers exhaust heat (most efficient). Combustion turbine is a simple-cycle jet-style turbine used for peaking. Reciprocating engine is a gas-fired piston engine. Steam turbine is an older gas-fired boiler. Fuel cell converts gas to electricity electrochemically.
About 582 GW of active and standby capacity; that is by far the largest fleet on this site. Natural gas is the single largest source of US electricity, supplying roughly 40–43% of generation in recent years.
Yes. Although wind, solar and storage dominate new additions, natural gas is still actively built, and this dataset shows dozens of plants in development, chiefly combined-cycle and fast-start peaking units to back up renewables and meet rising demand.
Older, less-efficient gas-fired steam turbines are retiring as newer combined-cycle plants and renewables displace them. The dataset includes several hundred retired gas units.
It reflects EIA Form EIA-860M (Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory) through August 2026, reconciled against the EIA-860 2025 early release (Schedules 2 and 3), supplemented by air permits for three behind-the-meter data centre plants that EIA does not record. EIA notes that preliminary monthly capacities are estimates and may be revised, and that a small number of plants may be withheld pending validation. A small number of proposed plants without published coordinates are omitted from the map.
Natural gas is the most-installed source in the country, and the map shows why it became indispensable. Plants cluster along the Gulf Coast near the shale basins and pipelines, and throughout the populous East and Midwest near demand. The fleet splits into two roles: efficient combined-cycle plants that provide bulk power for much of the day, and simple-cycle turbines and engines that start within minutes to cover peaks and back up renewables.
At roughly 575 GW of active capacity, gas exceeds coal and nuclear combined, and unlike coal it is still being built; dozens of plants remain in development. But its role is shifting. Rather than running flat-out as baseload, more of the fleet now ramps up and down to balance a grid increasingly shaped by solar and wind. That flexibility, not just raw output, is what keeps gas central even as renewables surge. We unpack that partnership in Solar Is Booming, Gas Still Dominates.
Data centres have taken over the gas pipeline. Trackers now count about 378 GW of US gas capacity in development, up by half in six months, and roughly 189 GW of it is tied directly to data centres; the United States accounts for about a third of all gas capacity planned worldwide. This map shows 59.7 GW in development, because EIA records only projects a developer has committed to in a filing, while the larger figure counts announcements. Most of those announcements are unlikely to be built. Of roughly 90 GW of behind-the-meter gas identified for data centres, only about 2% is operating and 1% under construction; the rest is permitted or merely announced.
The constraint is turbines, not gas. Three manufacturers make almost all large gas turbines, and their order books run to the end of the decade: GE Vernova held 116 GW of orders and paid reservations at the end of June 2026, close to six years of its output, with little capacity left for 2029 and 2030. Scheduled US additions for 2027 alone exceed the industry’s entire annual manufacturing capacity, combined-cycle lead times have stretched from about three and a half years to five, and costs have risen from under $1,500 per kilowatt in 2023 to over $2,000 for plants now being ordered. More than half the development capacity on this map, 35.5 GW across 37 projects, is due in 2027 and 2028, and that is where delays are most likely.
A growing share of new gas never reaches the grid at all. Plants built behind the meter to power a single data centre are outside this map, which tracks generation supplying the US grid, but they are real and large: the turbines behind xAI’s Colossus sites in Memphis and Southaven and Crusoe’s Stargate campus in Abilene total roughly 1 GW between them, and several ran for months without air permits under exemptions for temporary generators that the EPA closed in January 2026. They are also poorly measured: data centre reports usually quote the power a campus can draw rather than what its turbines produce, and the two can differ by a factor of three. So the 59.6 GW shown here understates how much gas capacity is actually being built for computing.