Global Power-Sector Trend Report · 2026 Edition
A trend briefing for investors, capital partners and the power-generation industry. Download the report below.
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Executive Summary
Global gas-turbine order book at end-2025, against 60–70 GW of annual build capacity.
Quoted lead time for a new heavy-duty turbine slot.
The year OEM reservations are expected to be sold out through.
Rise in turbine prices since 2019, to about $600/kW by end-2027.
Increasingly common cost for newly contracted U.S. combined-cycle capacity.
Global data-center electricity demand by 2030, roughly double 2025.
Announced U.S. capacity investment across GE Vernova and Siemens Energy.
U.S. simple-cycle turbine fleet: 2,251 units, mean age 27 years.
Feature 01 · The Backlog
Three OEMs, GE Vernova, Siemens Energy and Mitsubishi Power, supply about two-thirds of the world’s heavy-duty gas turbines. All three now report record backlogs stretching into the next decade.
GE Vernova holds roughly an 80 GW backlog into 2029 and is targeting 110 GW including reservations by the end of 2026. It booked 18 GW in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, with lead times of about three years. Management says reservations will be sold out through 2030 by the end of 2026, priced above current orders.
Siemens Energy’s backlog now extends to 2030, a record near €138 billion, with about 194 units sold in 2025. Mitsubishi Power says it will double output, yet it is already sold out into 2028.
A structural mismatch
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Feature 02 · Pricing
Wood Mackenzie estimates turbine costs will reach roughly $600/kW by the end of 2027, a 195% increase since 2019, driven by orders of about 110 GW against 60 to 70 GW of annual capacity.
The turbine itself is only 20 to 30% of a combined-cycle project’s cost, yet new CCGT capacity now frequently exceeds $2,000/kW. One 2025 U.S. benchmark reached about $2,157/kW, against $1,100 to $1,430/kW for plants finishing in 2026 and 2027. Large 250 MW-plus blocks still land between $700 and $1,100/kW.
Turbine price trajectory
Feature 03 · Demand
The IEA expects data-center electricity use to climb from about 485 TWh in 2025 to roughly 950 TWh by 2030, near 3% of global demand and growing more than four times faster than any other sector. Gas-fired generation grows about 175 TWh to serve these loads, and Wood Mackenzie sees data-center demand rising 96% between 2026 and 2031.
PJM alone expects more than 30 GW of new demand from 2024 to 2030. Its reopened interconnection queue drew 106 GW of gas, the largest single category, even as the industry adds fewer than 10 GW of gas per year in 2026 and 2027.
Data-center demand, doubling to 2030
Feature 04 · Supply
GE Vernova is investing more than $160 million, part of a roughly $600 million U.S. program adding about 1,500 jobs, toward 24 GW per year of capacity by 2028. Siemens Energy is committing close to $1 billion in the U.S. and restarting production in Charlotte. Mitsubishi is roughly doubling output.
The hard limit sits deeper in the supply chain. Single-crystal turbine blades are cast by only a handful of foundries worldwide, and that capacity cannot be conjured on a demand spike.
Expansion targets vs prior run-rate
Feature 05 · Bridge
Aeroderivative units are emerging as fast-start bridge power. GE Vernova’s LM2500XPRESS is deploying at Crusoe’s Abilene campus, while ProEnergy and Mitsubishi field modular units of about 48 MW apiece.
PJM capacity payments jumped roughly 800%, and more than half of the market’s fossil plants have deferred or canceled retirements. Proprietary fleet data shows a U.S. gas fleet of about 581 GW across roughly 6,800 units. Within it sit 2,251 simple-cycle turbines totaling 160.7 GW, at a mean age of 27 years, with about a third already 30 years or older.
Simple-cycle fleet by age band
Feature 06 · Geography
Saudi Arabia is targeting up to 25 GW of new gas by 2030, including HL-class units at Taiba 2 and Qassim 2 near 2,000 MW each. Egypt placed an order of about 4.8 GW, China cleared roughly 12 GW in 2025, Vietnam commissioned more than 2,700 MW of LNG-to-power, and Malaysia awarded 1,400 MW. Asia-Pacific remains the largest market by share.
The theme is simple. The same factories serve the world, so demand anywhere tightens supply everywhere.
The global order book
Global gas and power-plant footprint. Source: WRI Global Power Plant Database.
Selected new-build signals, 2024–25
Feature 07 · Technology
Advanced HA-class combined-cycle plants now reach 64% efficiency or more, against about 58% for F-class and 52% for E-class. They offer 50% hydrogen capability today with a pathway to 100%, demonstrated at Long Ridge with a 7HA and in the HYFLEXPOWER project where a Siemens SGT-400 ran on 100% hydrogen. The HA fleet has logged more than three million operating hours.
The framing for buyers is that the premium buys a more efficient, more future-proof and fuel-flexible machine, a hedge against stranded-asset risk.
Efficiency by turbine class
Feature 08 · The Investor’s View
The early-2000s gas boom went bust and burned both OEMs and utilities that over-ordered. Today’s lean supply base is a scar from that cycle, and the risk now is stranded assets built on speculative data-center demand.
What is different is disciplined OEM expansion paired with firmer, longer-dated offtake, including hyperscaler volume agreements stretching toward 2035. Contracted demand is not speculative demand.
The Investor’s Playbook
Three-year lead times, slots sold to 2030
Existing, interconnected megawatts carry a scarcity premium.
Turbine prices up 195%
Uprates and life-extension beat new build on cost per kW and on speed.
Hot-section bottleneck persists
Supply relief is gradual. The premium lasts years, not quarters.
Global demand competing for slots
Do not bank on a regional cooldown to loosen capacity.
Stranded-asset risk
Favor firm offtake and underwrite demand conservatively.
Appendix
A · U.S. fleet snapshot
Total units
~6,806
Nameplate capacity
581.3 GW
Mean age
25.8 yrs
Simple-cycle units
2,251
Simple-cycle capacity
160.7 GW
Simple-cycle mean age
27.1 yrs
Aged 30+ years
32%
Source: proprietary U.S. Natural Gas Power Plants database, EIA-860M-derived.
B · Glossary
Heavy-duty / frame GT
Aeroderivative
Simple cycle
Combined cycle
Hot section
Single-crystal blade
Slot / reservation
Uprate / repower
C · Sources
Wood Mackenzie, Utility Dive, GE Vernova investor disclosures, POWER, IEA, Bloomberg, Siemens Energy, Industrial Info, Data Center Dynamics, OilPrice.com, Ascend Analytics, GridLab and APPA, and market reports from FactMR, Mordor and Precedence.
Informational only, not investment advice. Projections are inherently uncertain.
The Bottom Line