Even as climate change is supercharging weather extremes and driving record years for billion-dollar disasters, and even as concerns are raised repeatedly by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and environmental groups, the nation’s largest federal utility is planning once again to just trade one fossil fuel for another. TVA is merely trading coal for natural gas.
The Tennessee Valley Authority formally announced Tuesday it will begin building a gas plant to replace one of the two coal-fired generators at the Cumberland Fossil Plant in Middle Tennessee by 2026.
With plenty of doublespeak, TVA President Jeff Lyash said the proposed 1,450-megawatt gas plant should reduce carbon emissions at Cumberland by about 60% compared with the existing coal unit.
We call that doublespeak because while gas plants emit less carbon than coal-fired plants, they are not carbon free and won’t meet the nation’s goal of achieving a carbon-free power sector by 2035. What’s more, gas brings its own special danger to the planet:
One methane molecule escaped into the atmosphere, while shorter lived than carbon, is roughly 90 times more effective at trapping heat than a molecule of carbon dioxide, according to scientists.