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Elon Musk is bringing his favorite talking point to the world stage: the US doesn’t have enough electricity, and that’s a problem for AI. Speaking virtually at the G20 tech ministerial meeting in North Carolina on September 1, Musk made the case that American companies urgently need new energy sources, particularly ones that don’t depend on China, to keep data centers humming.
The numbers behind the warning
Musk’s argument rests on a stark comparison between US and Chinese electricity trajectories. US power generation capacity is growing at roughly 4-7% annually, a pace that hasn’t meaningfully accelerated despite the explosion in AI compute demand.
China, by contrast, added a record of approximately 543 GW of new power capacity in 2025 alone. About 315 GW of that came from solar. To put that in perspective, 543 GW is more than the entire installed electricity capacity of most G20 nations.
Musk has projected that at current rates, China could achieve electricity output roughly three times that of the US in the near future. China is currently producing electricity at a rate of approximately 1,500 GW per year and deploying around 1,000 GW annually.
Musk’s playbook: gas now, solar later, space eventually
His AI venture, xAI, is already deploying dozens of natural gas turbines at its Colossus data centers. The logic is pragmatic: gas turbines can be stood up fast, delivering power in months rather than the years it takes to build new transmission lines or nuclear plants. xAI is simultaneously pursuing solar and battery projects to complement the gas infrastructure over time.
Both Tesla and SpaceX are aiming to produce 100 GW per year of solar capacity in the US by the mid-2020s. For context, the entire US installed roughly 32 GW of solar in 2023. Hitting 200 GW annually from just two companies would represent a paradigm shift in domestic energy production.
Musk also floated the idea of harvesting solar power from orbit, where sunlight is constant and unobstructed by weather or nighttime, a concept that SpaceX’s dramatically lower launch costs could theoretically make economically viable.
Why this is a G20 conversation
Several policy developments are already aligning with this framing. US regulatory frameworks are being updated to streamline the co-location of data centers with power plants, reducing the permitting bottlenecks that have slowed domestic AI infrastructure buildouts. There have also been discussions about constructing data centers in international locations like Saudi Arabia, where energy is abundant and relatively cheap.
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