What's next?
* Public hearings on the draft Integrated Resource Plan will be conducted on April 6 in Knoxville; April 9 in Huntsville, Ala.; April 14 in Tupelo, Miss.; April 15 in Memphis; April 21 in Nashville, and April 22 in Bowling Green, Ky. A webinar will be offered during the Knoxville meeting as well at www.tva.com/irp * The TVA staff will present its recommendations on a final version of the plan to the TVA board of directors in August.
TVA's energy future will be cleaner than in the past with more natural gas, energy efficiency and renewable energy sources replacing coal-fired generation.
But environmental activists Thursday night urged TVA to do even more to promote wind, solar and conservation to meet the power needs of the Tennessee Valley over the next 20 years.
A draft integrated resource plan developed over the past year and a half by TVA and key stakeholders outlines five different energy scenarios for the Tennessee Valley. All rely less upon coal, and more upon natural gas with some increases in both energy efficiency and solar power.
"Under all of our scenarios, TVA is going to be cleaner," Chuck Nicholson, NEPA project manager, said Thursday night during the first of seven public hearings on TVA's proposed long-range power plan.
Nicholson said carbon dioxide emissions will drop from 20 percent to 55 percent by 2033.
But Sandra Kurtz, conservation chair of the Sierra Club's local Cherokee Group, said the power plan should do more to shutter more of TVA's aging coal power plants. TVA is scheduled to shut down about half of the 59 coal units it once operated by 2018. But Kurtz said keeping such plants at Cumberland, Kingston, Gallatin and Bull Run over the next two decades "relies too much on dirty fossil fuels" and new natural gas plants will continue to contribute to green houses gases linked with climate change.
"Unfortunately, the draft plan also appears to penalize efficiency and wind power, leaving lots of clean energy potential off the table," Kurtz said.
Dr. Joe Hoagland, vice president of stakeholder relations for TVA, said high voltage wind energy like the 3,500-megawatt Clean Line Energy proposal from Oklahoma and Texas is not as cost effective and reliable as other sources of power.
"The wind blows when the wind blows," Hoagland said. "What we're trying to maintain is a balanced portfolio of power."
The proposed Integrated Resource Plan for the next 20 years foresees energy demand growing only about a third as fast as what it did when the last long-range power plan was adopted by TVA in 2011. The previous Integrated Resource Plan projected under the most likely scenario that electricity would grow in the Tennessee Valley at an annual rate between 2.8 percent and 3 percent. The new power plan sees energy growth about 1 percent a year, and that could be trimmed even more with more energy efficiency measures.
In fact in one scenario, TVA outlines the possibility that solar panels and wind mills on customer homes and businesses could reduce demand for TVA power and force the federal utility to shrink in power portfolio.
"We're clearly seeing a change in the way people consume electricity and we need to figure out the best strategies for this new environment," Hoagland said.
The power plan being reviewed by TVA is designed to be more of a compass to head TVA in the right direction, not a GPS telling the utility what turns to make at each point.
The draft plan will be revised and finalized by July and should be adopted by the TVA board in August when directors adopt the TVA budget for fiscal 2016.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6340.