AI’s power crunch is reviving retired jet engines
AI’s power crunch is reviving retired jet engines
The race to build AI infrastructure has collided with a far slower race to supply it with electricity. With grid connections and new generating equipment tied up in years-long queues, data-center operators are reaching for an unlikely bridge: retired aircraft engines rebuilt to burn natural gas.
The appeal is brutally simple: speed. Audun Martinsen of Rystad Energy said operators can get a jet-powered facility running in roughly 24 months, compared with an estimated seven years to connect 100 megawatts to the grid in Northern Virginia. “It’s all about getting power as fast as possible,” he said.
That pressure is already reshaping projects. Microsoft withdrew as the anchor customer for Nscale’s proposed Loughton, England, data center after the local utility indicated adequate power would not arrive until the early-to-mid 2030s. In the US, xAI installed eight converted jet-engine turbines for its Colossus 2 site in Memphis, while OpenAI used gas turbines at its first Stargate location in Abilene, Texas. Crusoe, which is building that campus, ordered 13 converted units from ProEnergy.
The practice has also found political support. President Donald Trump has pushed developers to produce their own electricity rather than draw it from the grid, telling reporters: “Data centers now are mandated by me that they build their own electricity.”
But the industry’s workaround carries an uncomfortable contradiction. Engines salvaged from aircraft can be deployed quickly, yet they are less efficient and produce more pollution than turbines purpose-built for power plants; more units are needed to generate the same output. Bill Kleyman, chief executive of Apolo, captured the shift in developer thinking: “How fast can you get me energy?”
For now, that urgency is winning. Whether these engines remain a temporary expedient—or become another fossil-fuel lock-in for the AI boom—will depend on whether the grid can catch up before environmental costs become impossible to ignore.
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