TVA's Bellefonte nuclear plant can be seen from Highway 72.Right now, the Tennessee Valley Authority is drafting a new long-term plan -- its Integrated Resource Plan -- that will chart a new course for the public utility's energy investments over the next two decades.
While TVA has started moving away from coal as its primary source of electricity, the utility's operators and board are still propping up aging coal plants. Instead, TVA should be investing in the future of the Tennessee Valley by maximizing energy efficiency and renewable technologies, like wind and solar power.
Burning coal for power pollutes our air with smog, fouls our drinking water with heavy metals and disrupts our climate. Those polluting impacts are felt disproportionately by the most vulnerable members of our society, including children, the elderly and low-income families. Scientists, medical experts, and public health advocates all agree on the need to reduce smog pollution from coal plants due to an ever-growing body of scientific literature demonstrating that it causes significant harm to those with breathing ailments like asthma and other respiratory diseases.
Coal's toxic effects on water quality are especially well-known to Tennesseans. We suffered the largest coal ash disaster in U.S. history at TVA's Kingston coal plant, and too many of our communities are threatened by the health and environmental hazards from unsafe coal ash storage.
To protect public health, TVA must make retirement of its remaining outdated coal plants and replacement of those plants with clean energy central to its long-term plan. Investing in low-cost, low-risk efficiency and reliable, affordable solar and wind power is the best way to reduce electricity bills, grow the economy, create cutting-edge jobs, and protect the environment.
Instead of relying on traditional polluting resources like coal, gas and nuclear, TVA can cost-effectively purchase wind power and deploy solar panels on roofs and brownfields. That has the added benefit of positioning our region as a center for clean energy jobs and development.
Major investments in energy efficiency are plain good energy planning. Rather than bolting hundreds of millions of dollars of capital to the ground for plant upgrades and new gas infrastructure and hoping that's the right choice for decades to come, TVA should focus on affordable, commonsense measures to help homeowners and businesses become more energy efficient.
Improved insulation and more efficient lighting and appliances will slash pollution while saving bill-payers' money.
For more than 80 years, TVA has demonstrated it can achieve great results through energy, environmental stewardship and economic development. It was its "Great Experiment" that delivered "electricity for all" to the Tennessee Valley. That vision of energy, stewardship and job creation can now propel TVA, and the region, past the dirty energy legacy of the last century toward a future powered by renewable and energy efficiency opportunities.
Providing "clean electricity for all" is an achievable, noble goal that TVA can accomplish over the next two decades if it starts making efficiency, wind and solar the core of its long-term planning today.
On Thursday the TVA board of directors is holding a public listening session at 8:30 a.m. in Chattanooga at 1101 Market St.
I hope you'll join me to advocate for more energy efficiency, solar and wind power for the future of the Tennessee Valley.
Sandy Kurtz is the conservation chairwoman of the Sierra Club's Cherokee Group and an environmental education consultant.