The Tennessee Valley Authority plans to shut down the last of the coal-fired power plants that once supplied most of its power by 2035 as the federal utility moves to a cleaner, carbon-free future.
But while TVA turns more to nuclear, solar and hydro generation, the federal utility also is boosting its use of another fossil fuel to keep the lights on even though many neighbors to the new projects don’t like their plans.
During a public hearing Wednesday in Chattanooga, the TVA board heard complaints from environmental activists and landowners who live near areas where the federal utility is proposing new natural gas pipelines. The pipelines would be for planned new gas generators at both the Kingston Fossil Plant near Oak Ridge and Cheatham County near Ashland City, Tennessee.
“TVA’s proposal to build a gas plant in Cheatham County caught all of us by surprise, and it is in direct conflict with the wishes of the people they are trying to serve,” Will Halsey, one of the speakers opposing TVA’s natural gas expansion, said after Wednesday’s meeting. “TVA is supposed to be bettering the lives of people in the Valley, and they seemed to be doing exactly the opposite.”
TVA bought 285 areas of mostly forested land in Cheatham County northwest of Nashville two years ago and is studying the site to potentially build 900 megawatts to natural gas-fired generation to help meet TVA’s growing power demand and offset the loss of coal generation. The Cheatham County project is among 7,000 megawatts of gas plants TVA is building or planing to build across its seven-state region to help meet the growing electricity demands in the region, especially when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow.