Petteri Wallden, chairman of the board of Nokian Tyres, talks to Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, right, at the groundbreaking of the company’s planned tire manufacturing plant in Dayton. Hille Korhonen, center, is CEO of the tire company.For the third time in the past four years, the Tennessee Valley topped more than $8 billion in major new business investments announced in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30.
TVA’s economic development department worked on projects totaling $8.2 billion in fiscal 2017. Those businesses are projected to directly add 70,076 jobs and spur thousands of other indirect jobs in TVA’s seven-state region.
The record helped TVA to be named a Top 10 utility for economic development by Site Selection magazine for the 12th straight year earlier this year.
The fiscal 2017 results were down from the record $8.3 billion of investments announced the previous year or the 76,200 jobs peak reached in 2015. But TVA President Bill Johnson said the continued investment by new and expanding industry in the region reflects the attractiveness in the Tennessee Valley and TVA’s efforts to offer more competitive industrial rates.
“In general, all of our [electric] rates have gone down [over the past four years] and industrial rates have gone down a bit more than residential rates because when we did our cost-of-service analysis, we determined that industrial customers were paying fuel costs that were not properly allocated to them,” Johnson said.