Tag: Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

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New Coalition Urges Quicker Moves on Clean Energy

(Credit: TVA)

A new coalition launched last week urging the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) toward a fossil-fuel-free future by 2030, but the provider aims to get there by 2050 to ensure low-cost and reliable energy.

Dozens of organizations formed the Clean Up TVA Coalition (CUTC) last week. It includes environmental, social justice, and political groups like the Memphis NAACP, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), the Sierra Club, Tennessee Interfaith Power & Light, the Center for Biological Diversity, and more

They formed CUTC in response to TVA’s move to replace coal-fired power plants in Kingston (East Tennessee) and Cumberland City (Middle Tennessee) with a new methane gas plant and 149 miles of new gas pipeline. Instead of investing in gas, the group wants TVA to invest in clean energy solutions to replace the coal plants.

“TVA is too reliant on fossil fuel energy and plans to continue to generate millions of tons of carbon,” said Pearl Walker, co-chair of the Memphis NAACP Environmental Justice Committee. “Households in the TVA footprint — especially Black, Brown, and low-wealth communities — will continue to be disproportionately burdened by high utility bills and dirty energy.”

In May 2021, TVA board members endorsed a plan to move toward net-zero emissions by 2050. The power agency has cut its carbon emissions by 63 percent since 2005. To get there, it added 1,600 megawatts of new nuclear capacity (the most of any utility in the nation, TVA said), added 1,600 megawatts of wind and solar capacity, planned to retire 8,600 megawatts of coal capacity by 2023, and invested more than $400 million to promote energy efficiency.

“The steps we’ve already taken operationally and financially have created a strong foundation for supplying cleaner energy without impacting reliability or low cost,” said Jeff Lyash, TVA president and CEO. “TVA is an industry leader in carbon reduction, but we aren’t satisfied. We are focused on increasing carbon reduction while maintaining our commitment to the low-cost, reliable energy our customers expect and deserve.”

TVA is on the path to cut carbon by 80 percent by 2035 without impacting TVA’s reliability or costs, Lyash said. It expects to retire all of its coal plants that year, using natural gas facilities as a “bridging strategy to effectively allow the addition of more renewable energy without impacting system reliability.”

But to get to net-zero carbon emissions will take new developments like energy storage systems, carbon capture, and advanced nuclear solutions.

President Joe Biden wants carbon-free electricity by 2035, according to an executive order he issued in December. Federal operations and federal procurements will be carbon-free by 2050, under Biden’s order.

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Coal Ash Primer

The massive East Ash Pond at the Allen Fossil Plant (Credit: Southern Environmental Law Center)

Coal ash will be the focus of debate at Memphis City Hall probably for weeks to come as Memphis City Council members review a rule that might make it illegal to dump the stuff here.

If you’re new to the issue — maybe this is first time you’ve heard of coal ash — consider this a primer. 

Coal ash is what it really is: the ashes of coal left over after that coal was burned here by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to make power for the Memphis area. TVA closed the plant that burned coal for electricity, the Allen Fossil Plant, in 2018. The plant consumed 7,200 tons of coal per day, and after it was burned to make electricity, that coal left behind about 85,000 tons of ash every year. 

In 2018, TVA made the switch to the $975 million Allen Combined Cycle Plant, which burns natural gas — not coal — to power the Memphis area. The old coal plant was closed, but all that coal ash remains.   

The ash is now stored in two massive ponds at the old coal-plant site, just south of McKellar Lake and Presidents Island. One pond on the west side of the campus was buried years ago and now looks like a large, grassy park. The other pond — the East Ash Pond — is murky, black, and lifeless but for some brawny stands of what appears to be sawgrass.

Under these ponds, and because of the coal ash in them, TVA found high levels of arsenic and other toxins in groundwater. Arsenic levels were more than 300 times higher than federal drinking water standards. This was determined to be a threat to the Memphis Sand Aquifer — the source of the city’s famously pure drinking water — and TVA abandoned a plan to pump water from it for its new natural gas plant.   

For years, TVA weighed options to deal with the coal ash in the ponds. In March 2020, the agency announced it would dig up the coal ash, put it on trucks, and dump it at landfills in the Memphis area. At the time, environmentalists supported the measure but were concerned about the many trucks that would carry the coal ash through neighborhoods for years. 

The issue was largely dormant until TVA met resistance to the plan in a hearing before the Memphis City Council last month. In its first August meeting, the council considered two resolutions that would ban TVA from dumping the coal ash either in Shelby County or within a larger area that could pose threats to the aquifer. 

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Cohen Wants Hearings on Coal Ash

A coal ash pond at TVA’s Allen Fossil Plant.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen has asked for a congressional hearing on the impacts of coal-burning energy plants and coal ash dumps on health, groundwater, and aquatic life.

Cohen wants the matter heard before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, putting the request in a Monday letter to its ranking members and to members of the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment. 

Ninth District congressman Steve Cohen

The move comes after a recent report that found “groundwater beneath virtually all coal plants is contaminated.” That report, called “ Coal’s Poisonous Legacy” was from the Environmental Integrity Project in collaboration with Earthjuctice, the Sierra Club, and the Prairie Rivers Network.

Cohen said if the study’s main fact were “true, this is obviously alarming.” He pointed to a list in the study of the 10 most-contaminated sites across the country. The Tennessee Valley Authority’s now-idled Allen Fossil Plant in Memphis ranked sixth on the list.

“In the case of the Allen Fossil Plant in Memphis, Tennessee,” Cohen wrote, “the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has acknowledged that there is a breach in the protective clay barrier that separates the high levels of contaminants in the groundwater in the shallow aquifer from the deeper sand aquifer from which the city of Memphis draws its drinking water.

“Other communities could be at risk as well.”