President Donald Trump may have enabled the nation’s largest public utility to keep its aging coal-fired power plants open, but the Tennessee Valley Authority is planning for a future in which the president’s climate deregulation may be reversed.
In a new, simplified version of its long-term plan to meet growing demand for electricity through 2050, TVA is preparing for a scenario in which federal efforts like a carbon tax seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The utility has also revised its modeling to increase annual growth in both instant power demand and energy served across time, adding a scenario of “supercharged” growth.
The simpler draft of the so-called integrated resource plan is scheduled to go before the TVA board of directors in May for final approval after years of delays. The last time TVA approved one of the plans was 2019, when it expected its electricity demand growth to stay low for the next two decades.
(READ MORE: TVA invited country singer John Rich to landowner task force. He declined)