SoftBank to spend an eye-popping $33B to build huge US gas power plant

SoftBank’s SB Energy is expected to construct an enormous 9.2-gigawatt natural gas power plant on the Ohio–Kentucky border, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the project. If it’s built, the facility would become the largest power plant in the United States and could supply enough electricity for roughly 7.5 million homes.

At an estimated cost of $33 billion, the project would be far pricier than most recent gas-fired plants — even as the cost of building new natural gas generation has surged, Bloomberg noted. It’s not yet clear who would end up paying for the development, though historically the cost of adding new generating capacity has often been passed on to ratepayers.

The Japanese investor is also a partner in the Stargate project alongside OpenAI. SB Energy did not say whether the proposed plant would deliver electricity into the broader grid or be designed to serve data centres directly. OpenAI and SoftBank are currently working on a “proof of concept” data centre at General Motors’ former Lordstown automotive assembly plant.

A power plant on this scale would likely require years — potentially close to a decade — to finish, even before accounting for a shortage of natural gas turbines. If completed, the project could emit around 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, based on calculations using publicly available energy-use metrics. And when methane leakage across the natural gas supply chain is factored in, the overall climate impact could be even larger.