The Tennessee Valley Authority recently made a financial decision it believed is in the best interests of its ratepayers. That’s exactly what the government-owned but non-taxpayer-funded utility is supposed to do and what those it serves should expect it to do.
But the decision didn’t please the green-energy-or-bust crowd.
Late last month, TVA decided not to buy the wind energy it had been window shopping for nearly six years. Its president, Bill Johnson, said the utility had enough power-generating capacity, the building it would have to do would cancel any savings the wind energy might bring, and it already was on the way to obtaining half its power from carbon-free sources.
He maintained the utility is “energy agnostic” and wants a diverse energy mix that is both reliable and low cost.
That’s exactly what we believe TVA’s and the country’s energy plan should be – not anti-green energy but not anti-carbon energy, either. While technologies improve that would lower the price of wind and solar energy and their delivery systems, TVA and other utilities are and should be using what is available, what is efficient and what is reasonably priced for its ratepayers.