After a year of waiting, those nominated to help run America’s biggest public power agency will tell members of Congress on Wednesday about their approach to governing the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Three nominees proposed by President Joe Biden a year ago will finally go before a Senate panel Wednesday afternoon for their confirmation hearings. The nominees for TVA director positions include Beth Greer, former chief of staff to Al Gore who now serves on Nashville’s Sustainability Advisory Committee; Robert “Bobby” Klein, the retired international vice president for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union in Chattanooga, and Michelle Moore, the CEO of the nonprofit Groundswell, which helps lead clean energy programs and projects in six states.
Biden also nominated Kimberly Lewis, of Huntsville, Alabama, but the White House withdrew her nomination when she decided instead to run for the Alabama state Senate.
The appointments to TVA are the first for Biden, although three other board seats will soon become available for the White House to name a majority of the TVA board. The new board members are expected to be more supportive of renewable power generation than the current board, all of which was appointed by former President Donald Trump, who often praised “beautiful coal” and domestically produced natural gas.
Maggie Shober, director of utility reform at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said she hopes the U.S. Senate will quickly confirm Biden’s nominees and urged the new board members to push the federal utility to do more to meet the president’s goal of a carbon-free electricity industry by 2035.