One of the nation’s largest utilities is once again turning its back on climate. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which serves nearly 10 million people, will replace many of its coal plants with natural gas plants instead of heeding the calls of advocacy groups and others to do the right thing and go with renewables. According to The New York Times, the TVA will soon be using enough natural gas to power almost 3 million homes by adding around 5,000 megawatts of capacity. That addition comes at a cost to the planet, especially given the fact that natural gas accounts for about a third of emissions in the U.S. annually. It only looks good that coal is being phased out because coal-fired plants, at their high end, produce almost double the amount of greenhouse gases compared with natural gas. Experts believe the TVA is headed in the wrong direction by keeping its customers reliant on fossil fuels for that much longer and, from an economic standpoint, it doesn’t make a lot of financial sense to keep polluters limping along when renewables generate power at a rate that costs that much less than fossil fuels.
So how did the TVA get here? By the sheer influence of the fossil fuel industry and the adoration its board and CEO have for massive polluters. Jeff W. Smith, who was nominated by Donald Trump to serve on the TVA board, mentioned nothing about climate change or emissions in his statement ahead of his confirmation. Instead, the former Oak Ridge National Lab COO focused on “reliable, low cost energy.” Fellow Trump nominee and former Republican politician Beth Harwell verbally committed to clean energy investments during a 2020 Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety meeting but has seemingly no environmental record and clearly doesn’t give a shit given the direction the TVA continues to head in. Yet another Trump nominee, A.D. Frazier, spent 24 years as director of what he boasts to be a “Fortune 500 oil and gas company.” And Chair William Kilbride, also a Trump nominee and even a donor, has been similarly quiet about climate change. His opening remarks for his confirmation really only discussed sustainability as it relates to plastic recycling and just how much he loves the Tennessee River and therefore doesn’t want it to be polluted. At least there’s no longer literally a retired coal executive on the board?
Which brings us to CEO Jeff Lyash, who is-—you guessed it—literally a former coal executive. Lyash’s tenure with Duke Energy saw him overseeing coal plants, which translates perfectly into his role at TVA being that the utility still has five coal plants in operation. Duke still has a startling amount in operation, accounting for more than one-fourth of its generation portfolio and plans to phase out some of its plants as late as 2048, according to a 2020 sustainability report. That plant, Rogers Energy Complex in North Carolina, will be converted to using natural gas. Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good later said in January that the company would shutter all its coal plants by 2035, but that is all talk until Duke unveils an actual plan and defines what that shuttering looks like. It’s not just Duke: Coal accounts for around 20% of the TVA’s energy and the utility is committed to dragging its feet on eliminating coal plants and reducing emissions.
A 2019 Integrated Resource Plan summary claims the TVA will “evaluate retirements of up to 2,200 MW of additional coal capacity if cost-effective” and the company plans to emit more than 34 million tons of carbon dioxide by 2038. Unfortunately, a lot is up to Lyash when it comes to the TVA transitioning away from fossil fuels. As The New Republic notes, Lyash was handed even more power this year and can approve major property acquisitions and shape economic development programs. Lyash also has the authority to hand-pick members of the utility’s federal oversight committees. Such responsibilities apparently come at an incredible cost to the TVA, as Lyash’s salary is now nearly $10 million annually. The number is so ludicrous that even Donald Trump slammed Lyash for making what he does, threatening to remove him from his position because Lyash is “ridiculously overpaid.”
Biden may have a chance to switch things up once his nominations to fill board vacancies are approved, which is expected in May. And in January, lawmakers on the Energy and Commerce Committee demanded answers from the TVA for its high rates and slow response to the climate crisis. In a letter sent to Lyash Jan. 13, the committee called out the TVA for interfering “with the adoption of renewable energy by its commercial and residential customers … Internal TVA documents identified distributed energy resources as ‘a threat to our business model’ and show that TVA anticipated its GAC [grid access change] would curtail the deployment of solar energy projects by 40%.” The TVA generates 3% of its power from renewables and only plans to boost that number up to 10% by 2035. The TVA’s goals are an utter joke and even referred to as “unambitious” in the letter, signed by four lawmakers. It’s anyone’s guess when the TVA will answer for itself, but once Biden’s TVA board nominees are confirmed, the absolute best move they could make would be to remove Lyash as CEO and switch up as much as they can because clearly the status quo at the TVA isn’t working when it comes to hitting net-zero.