Japan's Largest Power Utility to Build Gas-Fired Plant in U.S. for AI Data Centers

JERA, Japan's largest power generation company, plans to build a large-scale gas-fired power plant in the United States with a capacity equivalent to one nuclear reactor to supply electricity to artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, the Nikkei reported.

JERA reportedly plans to construct a 1-gigawatt (GW) gas-fired power plant linked to data centers in the U.S. Midwest, aiming for operations to begin in 2028. The investment is estimated to reach 500 billion yen (approximately 4.75 trillion won).

The Nikkei noted that this is the first time a Japanese power utility has built a power plant dedicated to data centers in the U.S. The publication projected that the data centers, which will be used for training large language models (LLMs), will be among the largest in the U.S., with investments reaching tens of trillions of won.

However, the Nikkei reported that JERA's plan is separate from the gas-fired power plant construction projects announced by the Japanese and U.S. governments as part of the second phase of Japanese investment in the U.S. during the bilateral summit in March.

Through the second phase of investment in the U.S., which totals up to $73 billion (approximately 109 trillion won), the Japanese government had previously agreed to build gas-fired power plants in Pennsylvania and Texas, with investments of $17 billion (approximately 25 trillion won) and $16 billion (approximately 24 trillion won), respectively.

SoftBank Group, which is collaborating with OpenAI on the "Stargate" project—a massive, national-level data center initiative in the U.S.—also has plans to build a gas-fired power plant in Texas.

JERA was established in 2015 through the integration of the thermal power generation divisions of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings and Chubu Electric Power. It currently operates 26 thermal power plants within Japan.

(Photo: Homepage capture, Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.