By Doug Kelly
If energy generation were a sport, China would be the world champion, and America would be a struggling distant second.
The scoreboard is sobering:
- China has beaten the United States 14 years in a row in electricity generation
- In 2024, China clobbered the U.S. 429 to 37 in added gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity—11 times more
- In the first half of 2025, China outscored the U.S. 290 to 26 in added GW—11 times more again
This isn’t a rivalry. This is a rout.
But in the era of artificial intelligence, gigawatts are the game. AI runs on data centers, and data centers run on electricity. The country that can generate and deliver power fastest and cheapest will gain a long-term edge in national security, economic competitiveness, and influence over the world’s digital infrastructure.
This isn’t just about AI. America needs far more electricity and a stronger transmission grid to re-industrialize, electrify transportation, expand advanced manufacturing, and meet rising demand across the economy. AI just makes the consequences of failure impossible to ignore.
Thirty years of energy policy neglect put us in this spot. So did permitting battles that turned five-year projects into fifteen-year odysseys, transmission lines stalled by lawsuits, utilities delaying upgrades, and NIMBYism blocking infrastructure communities actually need.
While China treated power as a strategic national asset, America turned it into a maze of hearings, litigation, and delay. That’s not a market failure. It’s a failure of focus and priority. And those can be fixed.
Here’s the good news: America still has every advantage it needs to win. The world’s best AI companies. Deep capital markets. Abundant natural resources. Cutting-edge technology. We’re not behind because we can’t build. We’re behind because we’ve made it too hard to do so.
That is starting to change. The Trump administration has outlined an AI Action Plan that correctly treats energy as core infrastructure for AI leadership. At the same time, major technology companies are stepping in, building dedicated power sources to support large data centers because the grid can’t keep up.
But private action alone won’t close an eleven-to-one gap. Congress needs to act, with a focus on four things.
Continue reading at Real Clear Energy.