Advocacy groups, Nashville Mayor John Cooper and the city’s public utility, Nashville Electric Service, have all issued formal statements opposing TVA’s proposed expansion of fossil fuels in Middle Tennessee. Local officials joined Congress, which censured the agency in January, in criticizing TVA for clinging to fossil fuels. Even though TVA is a federal agency, its own timelines disregard Biden administration carbon-reduction goals.
The recent flurry of criticism focuses on TVA’s planned replacement of the Cumberland Fossil Plant in Stewart County. Cumberland is one of a handful of aging TVA coal plants across its seven-state service area. Critics including Cooper, NES and environmental advocacy groups allege that TVA has only nominally considered renewable alternatives, instead reaching for natural gas. Over the past six months, the agency has actively facilitated the expansion of a new gas pipeline across Dickson, Houston and Stewart counties via fossil fuel giant Kinder Morgan.
The federal government created TVA in 1933, part of a suite of New Deal legislation. The agency was given almost limitless power to electrify the South, damming rivers and wiring Tennessee from its post in Knoxville, enjoying far-reaching powers of eminent domain and federal protections that bar competitors from its service area. In the past century, the agency has seen reports of bureaucratic dysfunction, operational incompetency and industry grift. The presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed board tends to defer to executive leadership, which has historically been dominated by fossil fuel partisans like current CEO Jeffrey Lyash, the highest-paid individual in the federal government — Lyash took home $9.8 million in 2021. The agency is still answering for a 2008 coal ash spill that has claimed hundreds of lives.
Nashville has few alternatives when it comes to buying power. The NES board’s May 25 decree, “Resolution Recommending TVA Pursue Solar and Storage Investments in Middle Tennessee,” is a laundry list of grievances regarding TVA’s resistance to curbing carbon emissions. A letter from Mayor Cooper, dated June 7, disputes TVA’s continued reliance on fossil fuels, reading in part, “Any plan that would establish a new gas pipeline or conscript Nashville into decades of carbon polluting methane is unacceptable.” Both city responses were filed during the legally required feedback period on TVA’s proposed gas expansion.
“The city of Nashville needs to take a leadership role with regard to addressing climate change,” Kendra Abkowitz, the mayor’s chief sustainability and resilience officer, tells the Scene. “We see this as an opportunity to ask that TVA really consider how a variety of different generation strategies prioritize solar and renewables.” The mayor’s office has met with TVA twice since filing its opinion.
Advocacy groups including the Sierra Club, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Appalachian Voices, Memphis NAACP and local chapters of the Sunrise Movement, acting as the Clean Up TVA Coalition, formally submitted a comment on Monday. “TVA must advance a clean, renewable energy system that addresses the socioeconomic and racial inequality facing the communities it serves,” the group’s letter reads. “TVA must commit to a just transition to 100% fossil fuel-free energy by 2030.”
Despite frustrations, Nashville recently re-signed a service contract with TVA, jumping peer cities in an attempt to get favorable rates. If Nashville wants to leave, the contract requires NES to give 20-year notice. Memphis, which is on the edge of TVA’s service area, is actively pursuing an alternative power supplier. Representatives from TVA did not return comment in time for publication.
