About 50% of the increase in China’s NOx emissions since 2000 can be attributed to the construction of new power plants. We show that the newly added NOx emissions from new power plants in Inner Mongolia, China, were detected by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) aboard NASA’s Aura satellite. Increase rates of NO2 columns from OMI and NOx emissions from inventories are even in quantitative agreement in cases where new facilities are added to already-developed regions. This study confirms that the OMI products are quite capable of identifying the construction of large new emitting facilities through detection of their NOx emissions.