Sequoyah Nuclear Plant is located near Soddy-Daisy.The Tennessee Valley Authority will boost its borrowings in 2013 by $333 million to pay for more and cleaner power.
But TVA’s preliminary 2013 budget released this week projects that most of the additional debt won’t count against TVA’s debt limit. The federal utility is planning to use alternative financing methods to raise more than $4 billion and avoid bumping up against its own debt ceiling.
TVA Chief Financial Officer John Thomas said Tuesday TVA plans to use more leaseback agreements with outside investors to pay for ongoing work on cleaning up aging coal plants and building new nuclear reactors.
“We’re building more capacity and continuing to make improvements in our air emissions, but these are long-term investments which will pay off over time,” Thomas said.
With lower interest rates and more electricity sales, the share of TVA revenues going to pay interest expenses has dropped by more than half in the past decade and a half. But TVA’s $2.5 billion capital spending program next year, combined with a projected stagnant growth in power sales, will push up interest expenses in fiscal 2013 from 13 percent of TVA’s revenues this year to 14 percent next year.