The fossil fuel is already the country’s chief source of electricity generation, and large natural-gas plants are being built around the country to feed electricity to new and planned AI data centers. The reality on the ground is that natural gas is “the default” to meet the exploding power demand from AI data centers, says David Victor, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and co-director of its Deep Decarbonization Project. Utilities in those states alone are planning some 20 gigawatts of new natural-gas power plants over the next 15 years, according to a recent report. And much of the new demand—particularly in Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia—is coming from data centers; in those 3 states data centers account for around 65 to 85% of projected load growth. If all the proposed gas plants get built in the South over the next 15 years, he says, “we’ll just have to accept that we won’t meet emissions reduction goals.”