The Tennessee Valley Authority recruited a record number of new jobs to its 7-state region in fiscal 2015, although the total investment in the region dipped slightly from the record high set in the previous year.
TVA said today that is economic development department worked with 224 new and expanding businesses over the past year. Collectively, those businesses will invest $7.8 billion and add 76,200 jobs in the Tennessee Valley.
The top investments included $1.2 billion of investments in the Chattanooga region, including the $600 million data center planned by Google at TVA's former Widows Creek Fossil Plant and $627 million of projects in Chattanooga and Charleston, Tenn., by the automotive supplier Gestamp, aircraft maintenance operator West Star Aviation and pulp paper maker Resolute Forest Products. Collectively, those new investments and others in Southeast Tennessee and Northeast Alabama will add nearly 8,000 jobs in the region once the projects are fully developed.
TVA set a record for new business investment in fiscal 2014 when the agency recruited $8.5 billion of new business projects, including the $900 million expansion of the Volkswagen assembly plant in Chattanooga announced in July 2014. But in fiscal 2014, TVA's total job recruitment totaled 60,300, or 20 percent less than the total jobs added in fiscal 2015.
"Economic development is a core mission for us in serving the 9 million people of the Tennessee Valley," TVA President Bill Johnson told the TVA board today during a meeting in Bowling Green, Ky. "These results show that that the tireless work of our economic development team helps businesses prosper, communities flourish, and people thrive across the entire region."
TVA provides incentive payments to some businesses, based upon their job additions, investments and power usage. But Johnson said most of what TVA strives to do to help business is to keep electric rates down.
In response to complaints about TVA losing its industrial rate competitiveness, TVA revised its rates this year in a way that shifts more of the costs for customers and TVA distributors from large industry to smaller commercial and residential customers. TVA also has maintained 99.999 percent reliability in its power delivery for the past 16 years.
"Supplying reliable affordable power is the single most important contribution TVA makes to economic development to our region," Johnson said.