Groups call on TVA’s board to pursue 100% clean energy

The utility TVA would add 35 GW of solar and 13 GW of wind capacity to reach 100% clean energy by 2035 under a resource plan presented by clean energy groups at a nongovernmental public hearing in Nashville. The federally owned utility now has 1 GW of wind capacity and less than 1 GW of solar capacity.

The hearing was modeled after a regulatory proceeding, with testimony from expert witnesses and comments from citizens, and was moderated by former Chairman of the Arkansas Public Service Commission Ted Thomas.

The clean energy groups convened the hearing after their June 2023 letter to TVA’s board of directors calling for greater public engagement in the utility’s 2024 resource planning process yielded an “insufficient response,” and a follow-up “petition to intervene” yielded no response, said a post-hearing brief.

Synapse Energy Economics developed the 100% clean energy plan for TVA. The nonprofit consultancy GridLab and the Center for Biological Diversity sponsored Synapse’s analysis.

TVA’s board of directors was invited to participate in the Nashville hearing, but when the chairman called the proceeding to order, “no one representing TVA responded,” said the post-hearing brief.

The TVA board is scheduled to vote this summer on whether to approve the utility’s final resource plan, which TVA staff are drafting in consultation with a utility working group, said Gabriela Sarri-Tobar, energy justice campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity.

The board has the power to reject a plan that is not aligned with the Biden administration’s federal climate and clean energy goals for 100% clean energy by 2035, she said.

TVA’s board, “and especially the six board members nominated by the president,” should “make it a priority to align TVA’s energy planning with federal climate targets,” Sarri-Tobar said, citing the “tremendous” financial and public health benefits of transitioning to 100% clean power as shown by the Synapse study. TVA’s board has nine members.

Asked about the engagement of the Biden-appointed TVA board members, Bryan Jacob, solar program director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), said “TVA is out of sync with reality and out of step with the Biden Administration’s direction and commitments. It doesn’t matter which president originally nominated the Board members. If they ultimately endorse a resource plan that includes new gas resources now, it will ensure that the nation’s largest public power utility fails to achieve 100% clean energy by 2035 and will increase the risks of high bills and grid failures for the people of the Valley for decades to come.”

Maggie Shober, research director at SACE, made the case that TVA is using a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process as a “stand-in” for “genuine” public and stakeholder engagement to inform its resource planning process. “NEPA was not intended to be used that way,” she wrote in a post, and “it falls far short of what is needed for the public to be able to interact with and inform key decisions that will impact our lives for decades.”

Peter Hubbard, a clean energy advocate with the Georgia Center for Energy Solutions, testified at the hearing that TVA “must account” in its resource planning “for the remarkably poor track record of failure” for carbon capture and storage projects “such as Southern Company’s failed Kemper project in Mississippi and NRG’s failed Petra Nova project in Texas, when accounting for the possibility that this troubled technology could work for TVA.”

Groups signing the petition to intervene were Appalachian Voices, Center for Biological Diversity, Energy Alabama, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Sunrise Movement Nashville and Vote Solar.

Those groups also signed the June 2023 letter along with three other entities: QCells USA Corporation, Sierra Club and the Southern Renewable Energy Association.

TVA serves 10 million customers across Tennessee, substantial portions of Kentucky, Mississippi, and Alabama, and parts of three other states.