Elon Musk confirmed on Saturday that SpaceX is building a foundry in Bastrop, Texas, to manufacture turbine blades and vanes. This development, which follows reports from The Information and due diligence specialist Corey Trinetti, is intended to address a significant bottleneck in the production of natural gas turbines.
Musk stated on X that both SpaceX and Tesla are rapidly building 100GW/year of solar production capacity. However, he noted that natural gas will be necessary to supplement and bootstrap solar for several years. He believes that casting blades and vanes in-house at SpaceX could accelerate the deployment of natural gas turbines by up to 18 months.
The demand for power, particularly for AI infrastructure, is a growing challenge. The International Energy Agency projects global data centre electricity use to approximately double by 2030. Gas turbine manufacturer GE Vernova is reportedly sold out of production capacity through 2030, largely due to AI infrastructure demand. This has led companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft to increasingly rely on natural gas to power new data centres.
Producing turbine blades is a complex process, requiring them to be cast as a single, unbroken crystal to withstand extreme temperatures. Only four companies globally have mastered this industrial-scale casting. However, the increased use of gas turbines has raised concerns about pollution, with federal lawsuits and health research already underway. For example, in Memphis, where SpaceXAI has operated gas turbines since 2024, the NAACP has accused the company of operating without required permits or pollution controls, citing concerns about smog-forming compounds and hazardous chemicals linked to respiratory issues.