Southeast Utility Giant Misguided on New Energy

Clean Line: A TVA Failure of Clean Energy and Environmental Leadership

Stephen A. Smith, Janaury 8, 2018 (CleanEnergy.Org)

“It has become increasingly clear that the Tennessee Valley Authority is taking a hostile position towards renewable energy. TVA’s recent decision to ignore, or flat out reject, renewable energy from the Plains and Eastern Clean Line project is the latest in a string of anti-renewable energy positions…[It is woefully behind peer utilities like Duke Energy North Carolina, Georgia Power, and FPL in Florida]…The Plains and Eastern Clean Line project was the largest renewable energy project proposed for the Southeast…[and] would have delivered 3,500 megawatts of exceptionally low-cost, high capacity factor wind energy from the Oklahoma panhandle to a converter station in TVA territory…TVA could have netted carbon-free energy for about two cents per kilowatt hour…a locked-in price, lower than the fuel prices of natural gas…[But it needed] utility power purchase agreements to financially anchor it…[TVA President Bill Johnson’s] track record at Progress Energy and now at TVA is one of building large natural gas projects and supporting troubled nuclear projects; he does not understand renewable technologies, thinks they are a threat to the traditional utility business model, and brings this narrow thinking to his leadership position at TVA…” click here for more

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