Q&A: Natural Gas is Fueling Demand

AGA VP of Energy Markets, Analysis, and Statistics Richard Meyer sat down to answer some of the frequently asked questions on natural gas and rising demand as technological advancements require more and more fuel. Watch the video and read to learn more.

What role will natural gas have in rising demand?

What’s really needed here is scalable energy and speed to market, and natural gas is the one resource that can provide large scale energy, bring it quickly to the market and provide the stable and reliable and large-scale energy that’s required to power these AI workloads and other strategic manufacturing sources.

Will the industry’s investment in storage and pipeline infrastructure increase prices for customers?

We can see a substantial amount of growing demand At relatively affordable and stable prices if we build the infrastructure to create that connectivity in the market and allow the market to operate.

How are natural gas utilities preparing to scale to meet rising demand, including from AI data centers?

First, [natural gas utilities] already are [scaling to meet increased demand] and have been for decades. The gas utility industry invests every year in modernized and expanded pipeline infrastructure to serve new customers in 2024 almost 25,000 miles of new distribution lines were added across the United States, serving one new customer every minute of every day as We meet the challenges of tomorrow to meet growing demand and doing so affordably, reliably and above all, safely. The industry is working with regulators, working with customers, including these new consumers, especially these large-scale AI and manufacturing customers, to make sure they have the energy that they need and that it’s provided reliably and affordably. That means innovation, not just in technologies, but also our regulatory frameworks.

How much additional energy does AI need?

The answer is we don’t know, but it’s going to be a lot. What we do know is that AI requires scale, it requires compute, and that means it requires abundant, dispatchable and reliable energy, and natural gas is the resource that the market is turning to meet this growing demand. What we do know is that we’ve got to build the energy infrastructure to meet this growing demand and this opportunity, this opportunity for the US economy, this opportunity for us geopolitical competitiveness.