Elon Musk urges G20 to develop new energy sources outside China for AI data centers

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 lat...