Tennessee Valley Authority faces a push to get greener and more transparent

Nanette Mahler, left, and Tracy O’Neill, walk along Macon Wall Road in Cheatham County, Tennessee, near the site of a proposed Tennessee Valley Authority gas power plant project. Local backlash against the proposal comes as the federal utility faces bipartisan legislation in Congress seeking to boost transparency in its planning process and scrutiny of TVA’s anemic renewable power growth compared to other utilities. (Photo by Robert Zullo/States Newsroom)

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ASHLAND CITY, Tenn. — When he heard about the sale, Kerry McCarver was perplexed.

In 2020, the mayor of rural Cheatham County discovered that the Tennessee Valley Authority bought about 280 acres of rolling farmland “in the middle of nowhere” in his county, which lies just west of Nashville and is home to about 42,000 people.

He asked another county official who formerly worked for the TVA, the nation’s largest public power company, to find out what it planned to do with the land.

The answer they got was “future use,” and they speculated a solar farm might be in the works.

“It’s kind of the last we thought about it,” McCarver said during an interview in his office in May. “Then a year ago last summer, TVA called here needing a place to have a public meeting.”

The TVA’s long legacy in the South

In the U.S. electric utility landscape, there’s really nothing like the Tennessee Valley Authority. Created by an act of Congress in 1933 as the nation was mired in the Great Depression, the authority was tasked with, among other jobs, taming flooding and improving navigation along the Tennessee River, reforesting lands, erosion control for farmers, malaria prevention, and electric power production, initially through a network of dams and hydroelectric plants.

“This in a true sense is a return to the spirit and vision of the pioneer,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in a message to Congress asking for legislation to create the TVA. The authority looms large in the lore of the region as a result of the surge in economic development and living standards it unleashed in what had been one of the most impoverished parts of the country. Average yearly income in the Tennessee Valley was about $168 in 1933, half the national average at the time.

“The most dramatic change in Valley life came from the electricity generated by TVA dams,” the National Archives note . “Electric lights and modern appliances made life easier and farms more productive. Electricity also drew industries to the region, providing desperately needed jobs.” During a tour of the area after the TVA’s creation, the journalist Lorena Hickok wrote in a field report to the Roosevelt administration that “a promised land, bathed in golden sunlight, is rising out of the gray shadows of want and squalor and wretchedness down here in the Tennessee Valley these days.”

Indeed, not too many electric utilities get a shout out in smash country songs. Bob McDill’s “Song of the South,” which became a hit for the band Alabama in 1989 , speaks to TVA’s legacy: “Cotton was short and the weeds were tall, but Mr. Roosevelt gonna save us all. … Papa got a job with the TVA. We bought a washing machine and then a Chevrolet.”

There was a darker side to all that progress, however. Thousands of people across the region were displaced and in some cases entire towns were flooded, creating a number of what the Tennessee State Museum calls “underwater ghost towns.”

Today, the authority has about 10,000 employees, a budget of more than $12 billion, 29 hydroelectric plants, four large coal plants, three nuclear power plants, and 17 natural gas plants, among other assets, and has one of the largest transmission systems in North America — 16,400 miles of lines covering 80,000 square miles.

It still plays a major role in economic development , but also has suffered some very public black eyes over the years, including a devastating coal ash spill in 2008 and subsequent litigation alleging the workers who cleaned it up, many of whom have since fallen ill and died, were not adequately protected.

The TVA was also forced to implement its first-ever rolling blackouts in 2022 during Winter Storm Elliott as fossil fuel plants tripped offline. Since then, the TVA has spent more than $123 million on winterization upgrades at the plants and made it through its highest ever peak demand during a cold snap last winter without any blackouts. — Robert Zullo

The authority was now proposing a 900-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant, battery storage, pipelines, and associated infrastructure for the site, which came as a shock to McCarver and many other locals who felt it was wholly inappropriate for the area.

“I called the county attorney and said, ‘What’s our options?” McCarver said. The answer he got: “It’s TVA. You don’t have any options.”

Opposition to the Cheatham County project dominated a public “ listening session ” of the TVA’s Board of Directors in May, when TVA officials told States Newsroom that the proposed plant is in the early stages of development and just one potential option to meet growing power demand in the region and replace retiring coal power.

“We understand that some members of the Cheatham County community do not view this location as appropriate for a new generating site, and we respect that viewpoint,” TVA spokesman Scott Fiedler said in late June. “No decisions have been made.”

However, the backlash comes as the federal utility faces bipartisan legislation i n Congress seeking to boost transparency in its planning process as well as its management and salary structure . TVA has also been in the crosshairs of green groups over its planned gas power buildout , which is among the largest proposed in the nation , and anemic renewable power growth compared to other utilities.

“Back when it was created in the 1930s, TVA was on the cutting edge of transforming a region of the country and investing in a lot of infrastructure to create that transformation,” said Amanda Garcia, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center who has worked on TVA issues for a decade.  “We’re just not seeing that happen now.”

‘Clearly a laggard’

Created by Congress in 1933 during the Great Depression, the TVA today provides wholesale electricity to 153 local power companies serving 10 million people in Tennessee and parts of six neighboring states.

The authority is replacing major coal-fired units at its Kingston (site of a massive coal ash spill in 2008) and Cumberland plants with gas generation and is planning to retire all of its coal power fleet by 2035. It has set a goal of 10 gigawatts of solar power by 2035 and boasts that 55% of its electric generation is carbon free, most of it hydroelectric and nuclear power. And TVA President and CEO Jeff Lyash says a little less than half of the 10 gigawatts of solar it wants to put in by 2035 is already “in operation or in development and construction.”

For comparison, though, utility giant Duke Energy had more than 10 gigawatts of solar installed across its 16-state footprint as of 2022. Environmental and clean power groups say TVA, a federal nonprofit power company, could be doing much more to advance a transition to cheaper, cleaner power.

“They, unlike many utilities, have the ability to do big things and do big things faster,” said Daniel Tait, executive director of Energy Alabama, a clean energy advocacy organization, and a research and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute, a utility watchdog group.

Tait and others say TVA’s leadership has been historically dismissive of the role renewable powe r can play on the grid.

“TVA is clearly a laggard when it comes to renewable energy,” said Stephen Smith, executive director of the nonprofit Southern Alliance for Clean Energy who has served on TVA advisory panels in the past. “Florida Power & Light has deployed more solar in a quarter than TVA has in their whole history.” Smith, who joked that he’s been “beating his head against the gates of TVA since 1993, said the authority was created to “lead on big national issues” but isn’t living up to its legacy.

“They’re not demonstrating leadership on renewables, they’re not demonstrating leadership on energy efficiency. They’re not demonstrating leadership on [battery] storage,” he said, partly the result of what he called an “institutional bias” against renewable power.

TVA officials reject that notion, with a spokesman telling States Newsroom that TVA is a “clean energy leader.”

However, Lyash acknowledged during the May board meeting that supply chain challenges brought on by the pandemic, inflation, difficulty securing land for solar, and the TVA’s own interconnection delays (it also runs the electric grid in its service area) have created snags.

“We’re not satisfied. We’re  going to revise our processes,” Lyash said. “We’re taking a hard look at how we can accelerate the deployment of clean energy assets. It will be a focus of ours in the coming year.”

In an interview, Lyash said the TVA is pursuing new initiatives to advance solar development,  like its pilot Project Phoenix , which would put solar panels on closed coal ash sites.

“If this is successful, and it looks like it will be, this will be replicated across our whole system,” Lyash said.

An ‘incredibly weak board”

Still, TVA, which now has a board largely appointed by President Joe Biden, remains out of step with the president’s own aggressive power sector decarbonization goals, green groups note. (The Sierra Club gave the TVA an “F” last year on its latest ranking of how well utilities are living up to their own decarbonization goals and transitioning to cleaner power).

“There’s a lot of room for the Biden administration to deepen their relationships with TVA,” said Garcia, the SELC attorney. “If the largest federal utility isn’t even coming close to that, then how can we have hope that we’re going to achieve that target to decarbonize the grid?”

The White House did not respond to an inquiry on TVA’s gas buildout or additional appointments to the board (two members appointed by former President Donald Trump saw their terms expire earlier this year.) Another Biden nomination for the TVA board has been before a U.S. Senate committee since January. TVA’s nine-member board is supposed to be its chief regulator, since TVA does not answer to state utility commissions in its territory. But, critics note, the board is part time, lacks its own staff, and usually defers to the TVA executive leadership on big decisions like power plant construction.

Smith called it an “incredibly weak board led by an executive staff that’s accountable to no one,” adding that reformers have pushed for the TVA board to attend meetings of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and hire their own staff.

“I don’t know how a part-time board with no staff  and no technical capabilities can review something like an integrated resource plan effectively,” said Dave Rogers, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign.

‘More transparent’

A big part of the problem for TVA’s would-be reformers is the so-called integrated resource planning (IRP) process. Although the process varies by state and regulatory regime, many utilities across the country file IRPs with state regulators that lay out forecasts for electric demand and outline how they intend to meet their obligations to customers, including what generation and transmission projects they are likely to build under different scenarios. The process provides an opportunity for ratepayer advocates, environmental groups, and large industrial customers, among other intervenors, to challenge utility assumptions about demand growth and the best and cheapest way to provide electric service.

TVA does compile an IRP, and it handpicks a working group of outsiders (who are asked to sign nondisclosure agreements, participants say) to advise on the plan. The last one was published in 2019. The process has been paused in part because of new power plant carbon rules by the Environmental Protection Agency.

But bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress earlier this year by Tennessee Reps. Steve Cohen, a Memphis Democrat, and Tim Burchett, a Republican from the Knoxville area, is intended to pry open the TVA planning process. The bill would create an Office of Public Participation to “facilitate a process for meaningful and open public engagement … including opportunities for intervention, discovery, filed comments, and an evidentiary hearing,” among other duties, a news release says.

The bill would also direct TVA to include standard information about long-term sales and peak demand forecast, a summary of transmission investments, scenarios that “fairly evaluate demand-side and supply side technologies,” disclosure of modeling assumptions, and analyses of fuel costs and environmental regulations, among other requirements.

Crucially it would require the TVA board to “issue a decision approving, denying, or modifying the plan, like every other utility regulator.”

Burchett and Cohen also introduced legislation that has passed the House and is now in the Senate that would reinstate the TVA’s annual reporting requirement to Congress on executive and top manager compensation. In May, the TVA board voted separately to restructure its executive pay practices, cutting incentive-based compensation and changing the severance plan. (Lyash earned $10.5 million in 2023 , making him the highest paid federal employee.)

“We’re trying to get them more and more transparent and give them some solid guidelines,” Burchett said in an interview. “If we say we’re going to let them do it, it’s not going to happen.”

Burchett, who added that TVA had become “too big and arrogant for their own good,” said he and Cohen have been friends since their days in the Tennessee legislature.

“We might not agree on a lot of policy things,” he said. “But public input and transparency are a couple of things we really agree on.”

Multiple attempts to reach Cohen for an interview were unsuccessful.

At the May meeting, several board members acknowledged the need to improve transparency, including in publicizing lists of large capital projects approved during the budget process and speeding up clean power projects.

“I also know that we need to go further, faster on our renewable energy goals,” Board Member Beth Geer said. Joe Ritch, the chair, said the board will “continue to review our governance processes and make changes and updates as appropriate.”

‘Everybody wins’

And while representatives of many of TVA’s local power companies showed up at the May listening session to voice support for the authority’s power plant buildout, others have some frustrations with the authority.

Most notably, Memphis Light, Gas and Water in 2022 refused to ink a new long-term contract with TVA, opting for a five-year rolling deal. It had been exploring leaving the authority as local groups pushed for cheaper and cleaner power. (Memphis LG&W turned down an interview request to discuss the contract situation.) Fiedler, the TVA spokesman, said 147 of the authority’s 153 local power companies have signed the long-term contracts.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of several environmental groups, sued over the contracts, arguing the “never-ending” deals would “forever deprive distributors and ratepayers the opportunity to renegotiate with TVA to obtain cheaper, cleaner electricity.”

A judge dismissed the suit last year, finding the groups lacked legal standing . The contracts allow local power companies to build local generation resources like solar to meet up to 5% of their average electric needs but some argue TVA should allow more.

“It should be 10%,” said Gil Hough, executive director of TenneSEIA, a state affiliate of the national Solar Energy Industries Association. (Nashville Electric Service’s CEO said the cap should be 15% ). Hough said local power companies can often get projects done faster than the TVA and the new generation, especially solar and battery storage, helps mitigate TVA’s concerns about growing electric demand.

Hough cited a partnership between Huntsville Utilities and Toyota in Alabama that will build a 30-megawatt solar system to power about 70% of a local Toyota engine plant as a prime example. The Huntsville Business Journal reported that it was the first time the local utility, taking advantage of the new 5% local generation flexibility option, would be buying power from “someone besides TVA.”

“Everybody wins,” Hough said. “Regular ratepayers win. Economic development. TVA doesn’t have to add more generation. Solar developers win.”

‘You feel helpless’

Both Tracy O’Neill and Nanette Mahler describe themselves as Nashville “refugees” who were seeking peace and quiet when they moved out to Cheatham County. Now, though, growing power demand in Middle Tennessee is a big part of TVA’s rationale for the gas plant, pipelines and transmission infrastructure proposed for Cheatham.

“They’re taking from us to give to other people,” Mahler said.

The neighbors aren’t aligned politically (Mahler is a conservative and O’Neill a liberal environmentalist) but they’ve bonded over their mutual dread of the proposed power plant. Both live close to the site and gave a reporter a tour of the area, a collection of old farmsteads and sparsely situated single family homes along narrow country roads.

“Who would have ever thought they’d come out here and do this?” Mahler said.

They’re both members of Preserve Cheatham County, a local group formed to oppose the project and the massive disruption they fear construction and operation of the plant will bring: heavy truck traffic, pollution, noise and light, and wear and tear on flood-prone local roads, among other impacts.

Despite TVA’s assertions that the project is in the early stages and alternatives are being considered, Mahler said TVA’s contractors are telling locals it’s a “done deal.”

Both fault TVA for what they say was limited outreach to neighbors.

“It feels like they have been intentionally secretive,” O’Neill said. “It’s just heartbreaking to think that all of this will be destroyed.”

That feeling of powerlessness extends to McCarver, their mayor, who said the county welcomes industrial development, but only where it makes sense.

“They don’t have a snowball’s chance to get rezoned for something like that in that area,” he said. “They just come in as the thousand pound gorilla having their way without having to ask anybody or tell anybody or even work with those neighbors or that community out there.”

State and federal elected officials haven’t been much help, he added. And offers by the county to purchase the land from TVA have been fruitless. The only thing that might derail the project, McCarver added, is some adverse finding during the environmental review that will come if the plant moves forward.

TVA’s been under fire for ignoring the Environmental Protection Agency’s critiques of its plans to replace coal-fired units at its Kingston plant with gas generation. The EPA said in a review of the draft environmental impact statement for the plant that TVA fell short in a number of ways, including not evaluating enough alternatives, lapses in cost calculations and other deficiencies. The agency asked TVA to prepare a supplemental analysis, which TVA didn’t perform .

“We appreciate the input from EPA as a cooperating agency in the EIS process, which was completed with the release of the record of decision,” Fiedler, the TVA spokesman said.

For McCarver, the past year of dealing with TVA’s proposed gas plant in Cheatham has been “a horrible experience” that’s made him painfully aware of the authority’s unique powers as a federal entity.

“I’ve always dealt politically with ‘not in my backyard.’ This is not a ‘not in my backyard’ situation,” the mayor said “Their area will never be the same. … You feel helpless.”

Congress needs to rein in the TVA, and forcing it to follow local zoning would be a good start, McCarver said.

“They put up a good front. They do a good tap dance. But at the end of the day, the feeling is … they’re going to do what they want to and how they want to do it and when they want to do it, and hopefully you won’t be their way,” he said. “Nobody should be that powerful. Why is TVA that powerful?”

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