The core signal is that Basin Electric and NextEra are exploring a large natural gas plant in North Dakota to support massive new data center loads.
The project is clearly tied to anticipated AI and cloud data center growth, even as officials downplay data centers as the sole driver.
Natural gas is being positioned as the firm, dispatchable backbone behind these compute builds, not renewables, which matters for GPU uptime and SLAs.
If built, this plant would lock in a fossil-heavy power profile for future high-density compute, with direct implications for AI energy costs and carbon reporting.
NextEra’s involvement shows big energy developers are moving quickly to co-design power and data center strategy, not treating them as separate markets.
For AI infra planners, the signal is simple: large-scale GPU deployments will follow where dedicated generation is planned, not just where cheap power exists today.
The article is light on technical detail, but the direction of travel for power-plus-data-center deals makes it worth a close read.
Source: Basin, NextEra eye building huge gas plant for data centers
