PDF: TVA Integrated Resource PlanWHAT’S NEXTAt 6 p.m. Wednesday, TVA will conduct a public briefing and listening session in Knoxville to update the status of its new power plan for the next decade. The public session at the TVA West Tower in downtown Knoxville also is available via the Internet by registering for a webinar at www.tva.com/environment/reports/irp.
With power sales falling and Congress still deadlocked over carbon control legislation, the Tennessee Valley Authority faces an uncertain economic and environmental landscape as it tries to draft its power plans for the next two decades.
“Long-term financial planning is very difficult in this environment,” TVA President Tom Kilgore told the TVA board last week, citing the uncertainty as one of the agency’s biggest hardships right now. “There are a lot of proposals out there — everything from renewable portfolio standards to climate control bills.”
Knowing what will pass political muster — and how the Great Recession also may alter future power usage — makes TVA’s current power planning exercise far more difficult than when TVA wrote its last long-term power plan in 1995.
On Wednesday, power planners and advisers will conduct a public briefing and listening session on the development of TVA’s new Integrated Resource Plan designed to guide its power generation for the next 20 years. Nearly halfway through the 18-month process for the long-range plan, TVA project manager Randall E. Johnson said TVA wants to hear more public comments on how it should supply power to its seven-state region.