Press Release: TVA lays out plans to tie Valley residents to methane gas for the next several decades

The Tennessee Valley Authority has released its draft 2025 Integrated Resource Plan today in which the federal utility lays out plans to maintain its reliance on methane gas resources through the next 25 years. An IRP is a roadmap of possible paths to meet anticipated energy demand to ensure reliable service- and safe and affordable energy- to customers.

Ahead of the IRP release, members of the CleanUpTVA coalition hosted the Rally for the Valley, at Centennial Park in Nashville, to urge TVA leaders to stop the plans to build nine gas plants across the Tennessee Valley. Speakers, including White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council Member LaTricea Adams, Memphis City Councilmember Pearl Walker, and Nashville District 17 Council Member Terry Vo, joined over 150 in person attendees, and 800 online, in demanding TVA advance a just transition to a fossil fuel free, renewable and affordable energy future for people across the seven-state territory. The rally also centered on TVA’s role as a public utility and the importance of meaningful public participation in its decision-making process, especially regarding decision-making on the 2025 IRP.

The public will have an opportunity to comment on the long-range plan ahead of the TVA Board of Directors vote to finalize the IRP next year. Beginning on October 21st in Murphy, NC, TVA will host ten open houses throughout the Tennessee Valley, as well as 2 virtual webinars. Earlier this year the CleanUpTVA coalition held a public hearing — the People’s Voice on TVA’s Energy Plan — with testimony from energy experts and a community discussion to model how TVA can improve public participation on the IRP. We also made suggestions to their open house model in meetings with executive staff. The TVA board has yet to hold a public hearing on any IRP, despite having the authority to do so under the TVA Act.

Statement by the CleanUpTVA coalition: 

The draft IRP consists of 6 possible scenarios and five business strategies, for a total of 30 portfolios. These business strategies are indications of the paths that TVA could choose to follow to address whichever scenario emerges from economic, policy and environmental factors. They range from TVA’s current baseline outlook on least cost planning to more carbon-free and demand-side generation. According to their strategy performance metrics, “Strategy C that promotes carbon-free commercial ready technologies is second lowest in cost, achieves the fastest near-term reductions in CO2 intensity, and reduces regulatory and financial risk^[1],” “has the greatest SO2 and mercury reductions^[2],” and “water use is lowest in Strategy C, which has the highest renewable additions^[3].” Despite this, most portfolios still invest heavily in fossil fuels.

“TVA’s draft IRP does not heed the calls of the people of the Valley to provide a fossil fuel free, renewable, sustainable, and just energy future,” said the CleanUpTVA coalition. “It is reckless for the country’s largest public power provider to ignore climate science and federal clean energy targets by proposing even more methane gas that fuels the climate crisis, especially after another extremely hot summer and storms like Hurricane Francine that put our safety at risk. Instead of pioneering a renewable and resilient energy future for communities, TVA is stuck in the fossil fuel past. Our Valley deserves better than decades more of dirty air and water, high utility bills, and climate disasters that disrupt the power we need to survive.”

The TVA Board of Directors should demand an IRP that puts our Valley at the forefront of the renewable energy transition. The board should ask for more specificity in the range of new renewable generation; 3-20 GW of additional solar is such a large range as to be useless for planning and review purposes. This ambiguity allows executives, including CEO Jeff Lyash, to abuse the flexibility to expand fossil fuel reliance in the Valley rather than strengthening commitments to non-polluting, renewable options.The board must demand that this narrower portfolio moves towards the higher end of the included range.

As a public power provider, it is also the board’s responsibility to reflect deeply on the lack of access that stakeholders have had to critical information the IRP team is working from, including modeling assumptions. It is not too late for TVA to provide adequate transparency and release all modeling assumptions for use during the public comment period. This information would make it so that TVA receives the most robust and useful technical opinions from experts and community members. CleanUpTVA will be examining all modeling assumptions, metrics, and analysis, incorporating input from experts, consumer interest groups, and communities, in our comments on the draft IRP through TVA’s NEPA process.

Finally, CleanUpTVA asks for a clear, detailed outline of how the recent combined 9.75% rate increases will be used over the next five years. The board should guide IRP staff in outlining a near-term plan for how TVA will meet energy needs in the Valley and hold a robust public hearing to address ongoing concerns with transparency.