The artificial intelligence boom and accelerating renewable energy transitions have triggered an unprecedented supply crunch for heavy-duty gas turbines, pushing delivery wait times to five years across Europe and the United States, according to energy market analysts and industry brokers.
The Five-Year Wait for Heavy-Duty Power
Western economies spent years preparing for shortages in semiconductor chips, rare earth elements, and copper. Yet energy markets largely overlooked the sudden surge in demand for compact gas turbines, units historically viewed by utilities as aging assets on the verge of phase-out amid green energy transitions. That trajectory shifted abruptly.
“Now, it takes up to five years to receive a high-power model ordered today. This is the longest lead time observed in a quarter of a century,” said Felipe Germini, managing director at petroleum product broker Germini Energy.
According to Damien Ernst, an electromechanics professor at the University of Liège, dual pressures are driving the bottleneck. “The artificial intelligence boom and the rise of renewable energy have changed the game for these equipment items,” Ernst said. He pointed to the “Dunkelflaute”—the German term for prolonged periods lacking both wind and solar output—where heavy-duty turbines serve as mandatory backup generation for modern power grids.
AI Data Centers Strain Grid Infrastructure
Simultaneously, massive data center expansions require uninterrupted, round-the-clock power delivered on firm contractual dates. Grid interconnection delays have stretched across years, compounding the crisis. A report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) noted that only 13 % of U.S. grid interconnection requests submitted between 2000 and 2020 successfully reached completion by the end of 2025.
Faced with multi-year connection queues, data center operators increasingly deploy modular, compact gas turbines on-site. “They are modular, can be built and commissioned quickly, and are extremely compact. Furthermore, in the United States, they run on cheap gas,” explained Nils Røkke, executive vice president for sustainability at SINTEF, a Norwegian research institute.
The industrial scramble is already visible in major tech investments. Billionaire Elon Musk deployed dozens of gas turbines in Memphis, Tennessee, to power his xAI data center, while SpaceX announced plans to manufacture proprietary turbine components to accelerate AI infrastructure rollouts.
Supply Chain Bottlenecks and Manufacturing Constraints
Production capacity remains heavily constrained. The market for large-scale industrial turbines capable of powering gigawatt-scale data centers or entire cities is dominated by just three Western manufacturers: American firm GE Vernova, German multinational Siemens Energy, and Japanese industrial giant Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
“For a decade, investors were led to believe that turbines were assets with no future, which led to the closure of certain production lines and the layoff of skilled workers,” Germini noted. Furthermore, major global suppliers previously prioritized highly efficient, sophisticated models while neglecting the basic units currently demanded by the market.
Siemens Energy pushed back against supply concerns through a corporate spokesperson. “We are responding to this situation by combining a capacity increase, productivity gains, and optimized workload planning. Over the 2025 to 2027 fiscal years, our gas turbine production capacity will average approximately 22 gigawatts, about 30 % higher than in fiscal year 2024. For 2028 to 2030, we plan to further increase this capacity to over 30 gigawatts,” the company stated.
Surging Costs and Broader Grid Equipment Shortages
Despite planned capacity increases, industry competition remains fierce. “The truly unusual feature of this period is that public utilities and data centers are simultaneously competing for manufacturing capacity,” Røkke observed.
Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie projects that the cost per kilowatt for gas turbines could surge significantly above 2019 levels by the end of next year. “It comes down to who pays the most. And in this game, companies developing AI have the advantage of greater financial resources,” Ernst analyzed.
The equipment shortage extends well beyond gas turbines. According to Ernst, high-power transformers and direct-current-to-alternating-current converters face identical manufacturing strains. Unlike solar panels or batteries, Chinese manufacturers have not captured these specialized markets, largely due to Western reticence surrounding sensitive infrastructure imports.
In Europe, grid connection refusals are mounting, particularly in Belgium and the Netherlands. “A small-to-medium enterprise wanting to install padel courts, build a hotel, or any business requesting additional power for growth is regularly turned down due to a lack of available grid capacity,” Ernst confirmed. While France has temporarily avoided widespread constraints, energy experts warn that similar grid bottlenecks could reach French territory within two years, complicating economic growth.
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