Tennessee Valley Authority Releases 20-Year Power Grid Plan | Pith in the Wind | Nashville News

The Tennessee Valley Authority on Monday released its draft 2025 Integrated Resources Plan, executives’ tentative direction for how the utility will expand over the coming decades. The last IRP came out in 2019 and previewed the TVA’s pivot from coal to natural gas. The company provides power to more than 10 million people within an 80,000-square-mile region.

Multiple scenarios in the IRP show the TVA’s new carbon-heavy gas plants as a liability even as the utility expands natural gas across the region. Every strategy projected by the 2025 Integrated Resources Plan proposes new natural gas. Some scenarios in 2035 and 2050, if federal environmental regulations force the TVA to address its gas emissions, include a larger backbone of nuclear and renewable energy.

“After a decade of flat electricity demand, the TVA region is now experiencing increasing demand for electricity driven by population, employment, and industrial growth, weather trends, and increasing electric vehicle use,” reads a summary paragraph in the 262-page report. “The region is also seeing more volatility in winter temperatures and natural gas prices that affect resource planning. Finally, the TVA continues to experience increasing demand for carbon reductions and renewable energy options from residents and businesses in the region and those considering locating here.”

Appalachian Voices, a regional environmental nonprofit, skewered the TVA for pursuing more gas despite the environmental and political urgency of carbon reduction. The group has joined other advocacy groups across the TVA service area to push the TVA toward clean energy.

“The CleanUpTVA Coalition is disappointed to see that TVA’s draft Integrated Resource Plan charts several possible courses to even more gas expansion in the Tennessee Valley, while communities are still fighting seven TVA gas plants and new pipelines that have been proposed in recent years,” says Appalachian Voices’ Leah McCord in a statement. “This is a critical junction in TVA’s history, and our public utility should commit to a long term energy plan that lowers electric bills, reduces pollution and provides reliable power by building more clean and renewable resources instead of fossil fuels. The TVA Board of Directors should strengthen the final plan by hosting a public hearing that allows for modeling input from outside experts, as is industry standard for most utility IRPs.”

Since President Joe Biden set out a goal for a net-zero power grid by 2035 — the TVA instead set its own net-zero goal for 2050 — an increasingly public rift has grown between the federal utility and its regulators in Washington. President Franklin Roosevelt chartered the TVA to electrify the South during the Great Depression, and with board members appointed by the president, it still exists under DC’s broad oversight umbrella. The IRP released this week shows a conservative utility reacting to market conditions and policy.

Rolling blackouts in December 2022 revealed a power system failure during Winter Storm Elliott. The public failure prompted investigations into the TVA’s grid resilience, referenced throughout the IRP. The utility shares that its own related investigation, a look into reserve power, is not yet complete. A planned System Operations Center will come online in 2026 to help better control grid reliability, improve efficiency across the complex power system and protect the TVA’s power grid from manipulation or cyberthreats.

The IRP projects six scenarios for power generation in 2035 and 2050. These scenarios respond to two major variables: electricity demand and carbon regulation.

The TVA’s base-case scenario combined with its baseline strategy — the clearest summary of current plans — builds the power grid on natural gas and nuclear power through 2050. These plans do not include carbon capture. Renewable energy remains a marginal contributor to power generation.

While the TVA has no plans to abandon gas, new environmental regulation from the federal government could force the company into expensive, emerging carbon capture technology. This includes carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) processes and co-firing hydrogen. In this scenario, the TVA would combine roughly equal parts of carbon-captured natural gas, nuclear power and renewable energy by 2050.

In every case, the TVA has a carbon problem. Continued investments in natural gas are making future scenarios expensive, environmentally destructive and potentially noncompliant with federal rules. Rather than the TVA proactively curbing its own emissions, the IRP indicates that it will adapt to public policy and market pressure.

Members of the public can submit comments on the plan. Staff will take feedback at 12 open houses across the TVA’s seven-state service area in October and November.