Markets

The same question runs through every market: how much firm gas can a large load actually contract, and how. The answer splits on market structure. In energy-only, merchant ERCOT, the interconnection queue is a real supply signal: it holds 8.8 GW of signed, near-term merchant gas, the strict screened floor: merchant projects with a signed interconnection agreement and near-term operation. A broader, probability-weighted read of the same ERCOT queue is about 19 GW, and the headline nameplate is 69.7 GW. In the regulated markets, the queue is nearly empty of new gas because the utilities build through resource plans, not merchant queue positions.

Read the interconnection queue in Texas. Read the utility everywhere else.

See the ERCOT gas queue reconciliation and methodology.

One market sits outside the ISOs and dwarfs them: the regulated Southeast (Georgia Power, TVA, and their peers) holds roughly 181 GW of existing gas, more than any organized market. That capacity is utility-owned, so a data center reaches it through the utility on a regulated timeline, not through a merchant queue. It is why Georgia is one of the hottest data-center destinations, and it does not appear in any queue.

Signed, near-term merchant gas is Tafel Power's filtered estimate from each ISO's own queue (signed interconnection agreement, in service 2026 to 2028, merchant), not an ISO-published category. For ERCOT, this 8.8 GW is the strict floor; the broader ~19 GW risk-adjusted estimate applies Tafel Power judgment-based probability weights, not ERCOT-assigned probabilities. Existing and planned gas are from EIA-860M. Figures reflect mid-2026 snapshots and may have changed since.