The Tennessee Valley Authority said it may delay the closure of its biggest coal-fired power plant if federal regulators don’t soon approve a gas pipeline project needed to supply a new natural gas plant.
The new plant is planned to be built as a substitute for the coal-burning facility.
In a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week, TVA Senior Vice President Jacinda B. Woodward said the commission needs to consider and adopt a plan for the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. LLC to erect a natural gas pipeline to TVA’s Cumberland Fossil Plant just north of Clarksville, Tennessee. The pipeline company, a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan Co., wants the commission to issue a certificate of public convenience and necessity to allow the proposed $225 million pipeline to be developed over 32 miles in Middle Tennessee.
TVA said the proposed gas pipeline is needed to fuel a new natural gas plant the federal utility is planning to construct to replace a portion of the generation capacity lost from the retirement of old coal-fired units at Cumberland.
Any further delay in commission action on the Cumberland project threatens to delay TVA’s scheduled retirement of the coal units, which would lead to additional construction, repairs and maintenance upgrades and costs, and delay TVA’s ability to implement a path to 80% carbon reduction by 2035, Woodward told the commission in her letter.