Assessing the agency for the good of the future
The Tennessee Valley Authority, is a quasi-Federal agency that first began in 1933 as part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal when the average income in the Tennessee Valley was $639 a year.
Its mission was to modernize a depressed region, develop fertilizers, teach ways to improve crop yields, control forest fires, and improve habitat for fish and wildlife.
They were to build dams to control floods, improve navigation, and generate cheap electricity. By 1934, TVA had hired 9,000 people. Ten years later 16 dams had been built. Today, TVA generates electricity primarily from 7 nuclear reactors, 32 dams, and 6 remaining coal-fired plants (many closed), plus a pumped storage plant, natural gas plants, a diesel generator site, 15 small solar sites, and one wind energy site.
Wholesale power is then sold to 154 local power companies and 58 direct-serve industrial customers. Around 9.7 million ratepayers in parts of seven states pay for this largest government-owned public power provider. Actually, there is little government oversight, though the President nominates TVA board members who are then approved by the U.S. Senate.
Since TVA is public power people get a say in how the agency operates to benefit the citizens it serves. Is the mission being met? Are people benefitting energy-wise, environmentally, and economically? How should the agency shape itself for the future?
Enter the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) for guidance. TVA is assessing what the future may hold and how to adapt to it. It’s a big job given the size of the agency, the expansive territory, and the many unknowns around resource access, public health, economic ups and downs, electricity demand, and speed of climate change impacts.
There are many “what ifs”. What if grid resiliency is stressed or what if more people made use of solar panels at home, or what if lots of renewable energy was added to the electric grid? Maybe it’s business as usual?
TVA formed an IRP working group to come up with six possible scenarios—the “what ifs”. Modeling ensued that produced six scenarios plus suggested strategies: 1) Current Outlook, 2) Economic Turndown, 3) Valley Load Growth, 4) Decarbonization, 5) Rapid Demand/Response (DER) Adoption, and 6) No Nuclear Extensions.
The draft is out and public meetings are occurring across TVA’s region. The next one is scheduled for March 20 in Chattanooga at Battle Academy School from 5–6:30 pm. Check tva.gov/irp for information and to read the 237-page document. It’s important to show up and also send in your comments.
Once all comments and ideas are considered, a preferred scenario will be selected for approval at the TVA Board this August. An environmental impact statement analyzing any impacts associated with an updated IRP is being determined, too.
Which scenario would you choose, knowing electricity demand is down, fossil fuels pollute, and costly nuclear leaves radioactive waste without solution? Further, climate change is bringing catastrophic storms, flooding, changes in agriculture, droughts and excessive heat.
Which scenario would be the most flexible to turn on and off as needed? What is the timeframe for plan implementation? Your answer as to which scenario may be “none of the above”.
In reading this draft IRP, Sierra Club and other environmental organizations have noted the lack of energy efficiency and conservation plans to save energy. As environmental attorney Brian Paddock said, “You can’t make even solar energy as cheap as you can save energy.”
In fact, this IRP seems remarkably unambitious. Closing the last fossil fuel plants and not extending nuclear licenses are good, but not soon enough. Given the speed of change, we should move more quickly to support distributed energy, use of renewables, and energy efficiency.
Why has wind power been ignored? Why is there no mention of research for power storage solutions? After all, TVA led the way with fertilizer development. Storage solutions make solar and wind more reliable.
This so-called 20-year plan does not value enough the urgency embedded in the science-based conclusions of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Negative impacts of climate change are speeding up, leaving us fewer years to take action. TVA, as in the past, ought to be a leader to benefit the people and environment in the Valley.
TVA has not selected the right goal. It should be focused extensively on leadership around climate change action. Instead of Integrated Resource Plan, we should call this one the Inferior Resource Plan.
Sandra Kurtz is an environmental community activist, chair of the South Chickamauga Creek Greenway Alliance, and is presently working through the Urban Century Institute. You can visit her website to learn more at enviroedu.netw