Long Wait Times Push Data Centers Away From Renewables
Developers turn to natural gas to meet rapid AI-driven demand.
WASHINGTON, April 22, 2026 – Despite falling costs for renewable energy, data center developers are often unable to rely solely on wind and solar due to long construction and interconnection timelines, Mike Sloan, CEO at Synergetic LLC, highlighted at Data Center World.
Sloan noted that hyperscale data center operators, driven by surging demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure, are prioritizing speed to deployment, a factor that often favors traditional energy sources like natural gas.
“The median time to interconnect new generations has just been going up longer and longer,” Sloan pointed out, citing delays across U.S. power markets. In some regions, wait times can stretch for years, with California cited as having interconnection timelines approaching nine years.
By contrast, natural gas infrastructure can often be deployed more quickly, allowing data centers to come online faster. “Data centers do not want to wait that long, they’re saying, I want to use gas,” he added.
The challenge highlights a broader tension between sustainability goals and the immediate energy needs of large-scale computing facilities.
Sloan said one potential solution is for developers to ‘go to the source’ by locating projects in regions with abundant local energy resources. Areas such as the south-central United States, including parts of Texas, were highlighted as offering favorable conditions for co-locating data centers with energy production.
In these regions, overbuilding wind and solar capacity, combined with battery storage and emerging technologies like hydrogen, could enable data centers to operate primarily on renewable energy while maintaining reliability.
Geological features present in these regions such as salt caverns also support the large-scale energy storage needed in many of these facilities.
Still, Sloan emphasized that while these hybrid models are promising, they require significant planning and coordination.
Until interconnection timelines improve and infrastructure scales, panelists said many developers will continue to rely on faster, more predictable energy sources to meet growing demand.
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