Is Steam the Answer to the Gas Turbine Bottleneck?

Siemens Energy is, by Dora Partners' count, the most active seller in the global steam turbine market. The company booked 132 orders in 2025—more than the next two OEMs combined—and in August alone signed a second 1-gigawatt steam turbine order with Babcock & Wilcox for U.S. data center power, placed before B&W even had a signed customer for the electricity.¹

It's also the company reportedly exploring a sale of a majority stake in that same steam turbine and compressor business to private equity buyers, in a deal that could be worth more than €10 billion.² If it goes through, one of the industry's best-known OEM nameplates would change ownership at the exact moment demand for its core product is climbing.

For the utilities, EPCs and data center developers who depend on Siemens Energy for steam turbines and the service relationships that come with them, the real question isn't the price tag, but what a new owner would mean for delivery timelines, parts availability and long-term service commitments. The data below suggests that timing is no coincidence.

The Bottleneck Behind the Boom

The reason traces back to a shortage one tier up the supply chain. Large-frame gas turbine manufacturers are sold out for years: GE Vernova's backlog stood at 116 gigawatts as of its most recent quarter, with delivery slots stretching into 2029 and 2030.³ Siemens Energy's own gas turbine backlog is at 69 GW⁴; Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is at 35 GW.⁵ Data center developers who need power now, not in 2029, are turning to steam turbines as the faster path.

Steam turbines paired with gas-fired boilers can move faster than a new large-frame gas turbine slot. GE Vernova markets its combined-cycle steam turbines as installable “in eight months or less”; Babcock & Wilcox's newest order from Siemens Energy carries a 12-to-15-month delivery window. “Siemens Energy's agreement with Babcock & Wilcox to commence work on these steam turbine generator sets reflects a broader trend we are currently seeing in the U.S. market: growing demand for reliable, affordable, and resilient energy infrastructure,” said Tobias Panse, Siemens Energy's senior vice president of steam turbines and generators, when the August order was announced.¹

Steam turbines are showing up on the nuclear side of that same problem, too. Baker Hughes supplied a steam turbine in March for Aalo Atomics' sodium-cooled small modular reactor design, aimed at the same data-center power gap from the advanced-nuclear angle.⁶

The shortage is showing up in how buyers are behaving, not just in what they're ordering. Hallador Energy agreed in May to buy roughly 460 MW of secondhand Siemens gas turbines, generators and a steam turbine from Energy World Corporation for $350 million—plus another $100 million to transport and refurbish the equipment—rather than wait on a new-build order to accelerate its Merom natural gas project.⁷ In India, JSW Energy went a step further: after citing “industry-wide equipment shortages” as the reason for locking in two 800 MW steam turbine generators from its joint-venture manufacturer, Toshiba JSW, for its Salboni thermal project in January,⁸ the company paid roughly ₹150 crore in May to increase its equity stake in that same joint venture, buying itself priority access to turbine manufacturing capacity rather than just a place in line.⁹

The order books bear that out.

After three consecutive years of declining unit volume, the global steam turbine market turned sharply up in 2025. Unit orders rose 10.1% to 588 machines, the highest annual count since 2021, while total capacity ordered eased 1.8% to 115,545 MW.

It was the second straight year in which global steam turbine orders cleared 100 GW—the first back-to-back pair since 2014 and 2015. Capacity ordered in 2025 ran more than double the 2019 trough of 49,364 MW.

Dora Partners & Company and its partner, McCoy Power Reports, which has tracked steam turbine orders since 1980, recorded 534 units and 117,666 MW in 2024. The two years read almost identically on capacity but very differently on unit count—buyers took delivery slots on more machines in 2025, and on average smaller ones.

Who's Leading the Pack?

There is no single answer, because the steam turbine market keeps two scoreboards and they disagree almost completely.

By unit count, Siemens Energy led 2025 with 132 orders—22.4% of the global total, and more than the next two OEMs combined. Triveni Turbine Limited took 77 units for 13.1%. By megawatts, both fall away sharply: Siemens booked 8,994 MW, or 7.8% of capacity ordered, and Triveni 913 MW, under 1%.

The capacity score belongs to China. Harbin Steam Turbine led with 21,430 MW (18.5%), followed by Shanghai Turbine at 20,677 MW (17.9%) and Dongfang Turbine at 13,290 MW (11.5%). Together the three took 47.9% of global capacity ordered in 2025 on 115 units, or 19.6% of the count.

GE Vernova booked 9,725 MW across 29 units and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries 9,688 MW across 35, placing them fourth and fifth on capacity at roughly 8.4% each.

The sharp reversal in unit orders vs. MW noted above reflects two factors. One, gas turbine combined cycle (GTCC) is the fastest growing segment for global steam turbines and many GRCC projects require steam turbines less than 150MW. Second, the demand for power has outstripped many OEM's manufacturing capacity. Many second-tier manufacturers have stepped in to fill the void with smaller units.

The split is structural rather than a quirk of one year. Steam turbines at or above 150 MW accounted for 38.3% of units ordered in 2025 but 90.8% of megawatts. The 600–800 MW band alone—60 machines—carried 39,661 MW, or 34.3% of all capacity ordered. Twenty units above 1,000 MW carried another 19.4%.

Below 150 MW, the arithmetic inverts: 363 machines, 61.7% of units, and 9.2% of capacity. Those are two different businesses with different customers, different sales cycles and different competitors, reported under one market heading.

Market Drivers

There are four forces shaping the market through the forecast period: power demand from AI and data centers, gas-fired combined cycle, new unit pricing, and OEM intellectual property as a barrier to entry.

Data Center and AI Development

The global surge in power demand driven by AI, data centers, crypto and general load growth has produced a strong outlook across most application sectors, with the trend toward larger-capacity units in this segment continuing. Data center activity is expected to buoy the market primarily through units above 100 MW. Between 2024 and 2025, this segment grew roughly fiftyfold.

Gas-Fired Combined Cycle

The clearest driver in the 2025 data is the gas turbine boom pulling steam turbines behind it. Steam turbine orders for combined-cycle service doubled in 2025, with capacity rising 128%. Combined cycle moved from under 11% of unit orders to 19.4% for the year.

Every combined-cycle power block needs a bottoming steam cycle. As gas turbine order books filled through the back half of the decade, the steam turbine orders attached to them followed.

New Unit Pricing

New unit pricing has been affected by inflationary pressure and overall order volume, with steady increases expected over the next five years.

Intellectual Property and Barriers to Entry

Barriers to entry in steam turbines are generally lower than in gas turbines, but the introduction of new technology and stronger OEM intellectual property positions are raising them. The result is pushing independent service shops toward older units where those constraints are weaker. For new units, the strong demand has created marketing opportunities for OEM's offering older technology.

Application Market Overview

Thermal renewable remained the largest application by unit count in 2025 at 196 machines, or 33.3% of orders—a position it has held consistently since 2020. On capacity it accounts for just 3.5% of the total, which is the units-versus-megawatts split in miniature: biomass, waste-to-energy, and geothermal machines are numerous and small.

The segment's longer arc is less a straight climb than a boom that has cooled. Thermal renewable unit orders grew from 114 in 2012 to a peak of 293 in 2021, then settled back to the high 100s. Industrial applications ran the opposite way over the same period, falling from 270 units in 2012 to 153 in 2021 before recovering to 194 in 2025.

Combined cycle followed at 114 units and 27,485 MW. Utility fossil took 52 units and 13,566 MW.

Mechanical drive applications fell once again to only 15 units. This continues the more than 10-year trend of declining orders as large variable speed electric motors are specified many new projects.

Nuclear was the year's other notable mover. Orders rose from six units and 6,880 MW in 2024 to 17 units and 11,310 MW in 2025—2.9% of units but 9.8% of capacity.

Where the Orders Went

The sharpest movement in 2025 was in the regional market positions. North America and Europe both posted significant gains in market share. Russia more than doubled the number of units ordered but remains small compared to other regions.

Asia Pacific remains the market's center of gravity but gave ground in relative terms. Its share of global units fell from 67% to 57.5%. The Middle East, South America, and Africa all declined.

Asia Pacific's decline is not a one-year event. Regional unit orders peaked in 2021 and have fallen each year since; marking a 27% drop across four years. The global total held roughly flat over the same span, which means the rest of the world absorbed the difference. North America and Europe saw most of that gain in 2025.

The pattern tracks what has already reshaped the gas turbine market: North American power demand is running ahead of supply, and buyers are struggling to bring power online in the timeframe they need it.

The Competitive Picture

Over the ten-year forecast window, Dora Partners projects $430.1 billion in new unit value. Nearly half of it goes to three Chinese OEMs: Shanghai Turbine, Harbin, and Dongfang.

Siemens Energy is the leading non-Chinese OEM, just ahead of GE Vernova and Mitsubishi. Arabelle Solutions—the nuclear steam turbine business GE Vernova sold to EDF in May 2024, now a wholly owned EDF subsidiary, is strong in the nuclear segment.

Siemens Energy would be following a path a rival has already taken. GE Vernova's Arabelle Solutions sale was framed in nearly identical terms: CEO Scott Strazik called it “a significant step in our ongoing strategy to focus on core services” at the time.(10) If Siemens Energy's steam turbine stake sale closes, it would put the two Western OEMs with the largest and most diversified steam turbine order books through the same portfolio logic within roughly two years of each other, even as both continue booking new orders at a record pace.

For Western OEMs, the competitive question is not volume but position. Siemens leads the world on unit count while holding 11% of forecast value; the Chinese three hold half the value on a fifth of the units. Whether that gap narrows depends less on product than on where large utility capacity gets built over the next decade.

That decade-long question now has a nearer-term test case. Whoever ends up owning Siemens Energy's steam turbine business—Siemens Energy itself, or a private equity buyer—inherits a division booking record order volume at the exact moment the broader market is being asked to prove whether 2025's rebound is a cyclical bump or a structural shift.

The Ten-Year Outlook

Dora Partners forecasts new unit order value of $46.2 billion in 2026, peaking at $51.0 billion in 2027 before easing in the following years. On units, the model projects a near-term climb to a 2027 peak, followed by a decade-long decline to 2035 that would leave annual unit orders below where they stand today.

Industrial applications account for the largest share of the forecast followed by utility fossil, combined cycle, thermal renewable, nuclear, and mechanical drive.

The shape of that forecast puts on weight for the next 24 months. If steam turbines follow gas turbines on lead times and pricing, order books through the peak will be substantially set before it arrives.

For Siemens Energy, that timeline is not abstract. A stake sale process that plays out over the next several quarters would be decided inside the same 24-month window this report identifies as the one that sets the order book through the peak. Whoever is holding the pen when that window closes will have set the terms for the rest of the decade.

A copy of Dora Partner's 10-year forecast along with a detailed market analysis can be found at https://www.dora-partners.com/dora-reports.php. The forecast report provides a detailed historical perspective, a primer on steam turbine configurations, a discussion of market drivers, and detailed overviews of the major steam turbine OEMs.

References
1. Babcock & Wilcox. Babcock & Wilcox Signs Agreement with Siemens Energy to Commence Work on 20 Steam Turbines for Data Center Power Generation. Press release; August 11, 2026.
2. Siemens Energy Taps Goldman Sachs for Steam Turbine Stake Sale. Bloomberg; August 24, 2026.
3. GE Vernova. GE Vernova Releases Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results. Press release; July 22, 2026.
4. Siemens. Siemens Continues Path of Profitable Growth. Press release; May 13, 2026.
5. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. MHI Announces Outline of FY2026 First 3 Months Financial Results Ended June 30, 2026. Press release; August 4, 2026.
6. Aalo Atomics. Aalo Atomics Taps Baker Hughes to Supply Steam Turbine for Aalo-X Nuclear Reactor; Collaboration Represents Next Step on Aalo's Path to Full Power Operation. Press release; March 4, 2026.
7. Hallador Energy Company. Hallador Energy Acquires 460 MW of Siemens Turbines for $350 Million, Accelerating Merom Natural Gas Generation Project. Press release; June 1, 2026.
8. JSW Energy. JSW Energy Secures Supply of Turbine Generators for 1,600 MW Salboni Plant. Press release; January 16, 2026.
9. JSW Energy Completes Share Acquisition In Toshiba JSW Power Systems, Increasing Stake To 20.7%. July 21, 2026. https://www.sahi.com/news/jsw-energy-completes-share-acquisition-in-toshiba-jsw-power-systems-increasing-stake-to-20-7-3604-PE1_COR
10. GE Vernova. GE Vernova completes sale of portion of Steam Power activities to EDF. Press release; May 31, 2024.