Tag: Tennessee Valley Authority

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Environmental Groups Urge MLGW to Vote Down New TVA Contract

(Credit: TVA)

Environmental groups and Memphis community activists continue to urge the city’s utility provider against signing a “never-ending contract” with the Tennessee Valley Authority, adding that TVA’s promise to provide better service stands in contrast with their past treatment of Memphis customers. 

In September, the utility provider Memphis Gas Light and Water announced that it will likely continue using TVA as an energy provider,  after months deliberating on whether to renew a contract. MLGW officials also announced intentions to sign a 20-year contract with TVA due to incentives and promises of lower costs to customers. 

But community activists, who dubbed the proposal as a “never-ending contract,” criticized the plan, citing the TVA’s documented treatment of low-income communities and neglected appearance of facilities within the city.

TVA Chief Executive Officer Jeff Lyash promised the MLGW board that if they committed to a long-term contract, TVA would improve its admittedly neglected presence in Memphis by dedicating TVA staff in Memphis to energy-burden reduction. 

Justin Pearson of Memphis Against Pollution. (Photo: John Partipilo)

After a public-comment period, which was extended from the original 30 days to 60 days, activists attended MLGW’s Wednesday board meeting to urge board members to vote against the contract, in anticipation of a Nov. 16 vote. 

“This is the most attention we’ve gotten from TVA in years, but there’s a difference in getting attention and getting people to change behaviors,” said Justin J. Pearson, a community activist and co-founder of Memphis Community Against Pollution.

“But the behavior of the TVA has not changed in such a way that would be beneficial to all of the customers here,” he added. 

Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy have been critical of TVA’s plans to expand its natural gas production as a way to reach “zero carbon” energy infrastructure by 2050. 

Community leaders also criticized TVA’s offer to provide Memphis with lower costs after customers saw higher monthly bills this summer. MLGW sent out notice to Memphis customers that TVA had increased pricing due after the war in Ukraine caused natural gas rates to rise. 

This proved that natural gas was a volatile energy source, they said. 

“This will make energy burdens worse in communities. Our customers are already struggling to pay their bills,” said Pearl Walker, the environmental climate and justice chair for the Memphis chapter of the NAACP.  

Leaders with Protect Our Aquifer, MCAP and others instead urged the MLGW board to continue five-year contracts  with TVA, which would allow Memphis to retain its ability to negotiate for better deals.

Activists also pointed out that the current proposed contract allows TVA to opt out of obligations to maintain infrastructure should MLGW leave.

“A generation from now will say, yes, let’s stop having TVA take care of the transmission lines because we found a better deal. It traps us, indefinitely, with them. And they’re saying they’re going to be punitive if you ever did say you were going to leave. This is not a deal you would ever sign for your business or for your family. Please don’t sign it for our city,” said Pearson. 

Once the MLGW board votes, the final decision goes to the Memphis City Council for final approval.



Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.

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Environmental Groups Want More Time On MLGW Power Supply Decision

(Credit: TVA)

Environmental groups are asking Memphis Light, Gas & Water (MLGW) for more time on its power supply decision to allow for further review and public comment. 

MLGW staff recommended last week that the utility stay with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) as its power provider. The recommendation came after local review on the decision, several studies on energy reliability and potential savings, and much noise made by environmental groups who say TVA is not doing enough on sustainable energy and that its contracts are too long. 

When MLGW announced the recommendation last week, it came with a vague, 30-day period for public comment on the move. Three groups — the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), Protect Our Aquifer (POA), and Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP) — asked the MLGW board commissioners for an additional month. 

The request would give another month for public comment, and another month after that for MLGW’s commissioners to review those comments. If the request is granted, a final vote on the power-supply decision would come no sooner than November 30th. 

”The [MLGW board of commissioners] must have adequate time to meaningfully consider public comment,” reads the letter issued Tuesday. “Otherwise, the board risks the appearance of merely rubber-stamping the staff recommendation. It is particularly important that the Board’s decision-making process be open and transparent because of the existing relationships between TVA and MLGW.”

MLGW has been a TVA customer for more than 80 years. MLGW is also TVA’s largest customer. 

Last week’s announcement of the MLGW staff recommendation was criticized by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) saying “we’re confident it’s not in the best interest of MLGW customers.” The group said the new 20-year contract, which has already been signed by numerous other TVA clients, would “lock the utility and its ratepayers into a forever contract.” The current contract with TVA is up every five years. 

“We disagree with the recommendation MLGW staff presented to the MLGW Board of Commissioners and look forward to finally being able to see the responses to the MLGW power-supply proposal,” said Dr. Steven Smith, SACE executive director. “We are concerned that today’s presentation was highly skewed and lacked an appropriate balance of risk and benefits. We look forward to reviewing the underlying data that these assumptions were built on.”

Other providers, SACE said, could offer offer longer-term economic and environmental benefits. These benefits could also greatly increase now, SACE said, after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. SACE said the new law — with its billions in spending for environmental projects — could “greatly amplify alternative portfolios’ estimated savings and energy resiliency benefits” that could “be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Memphis if MLGW is not restricted by TVA’s contract requirements.”

As for environmental issues, TVA said the day before MLGW’s announcement last week that it plans to be 80 percent carbon free by 2035 and completely carbon free by 2050. TVA’s timeline does not match that of President Joe Biden, who wants a carbon free power grid by 2035. TVA says it must move slower to ensure reliability. 

TVA has said that more than half of its energy sources are carbon free and not “not affected by fuel price volatility.” The TVA board voted last week to keep its base electric rate steady through its next fiscal year. But many Memphians were shocked this summer as high natural gas prices from TVA made for much higher MLGW bills. 

MLGW staffers said if the utility stayed with TVA, customers would save about $32 a year on their electric bills. Overall, MLGW said the new contract with TVA “demonstrates the greatest value and least risk.” They said the move would save MLGW $125 million over the next five years and $944 million over the next 25 years. 

The three groups asking for more time for board members to review the possible TVA move asked for more transparency in the vote as well. They said the long relationship between TVA and MLGW is yet another reason for board members to have a close look at all the offers not he table. 

“TVA is MLGW’s current power provider, and the utilities’ decades-long relationship gives TVA unique access to MLGW and its customers,” reads the letter. “Indeed, recent news reports reveal that TVA spent the past several years lobbying suburban governments served by MLGW to support the federal utility’s bid. 

“TVA is also MLGW’s largest water customer, giving the federal utility another advantage in this decision-making process and adding another reason why it is important that the board carefully evaluate independent, third-party perspectives shared during the public comment period.”

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TVA Calls for Carbon-Free Power

(Credit: TVA)

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) issued one of the nation’s largest requests for carbon-free power on Tuesday.

TVA is asking for proposals from companies for 5,000 megawatts of carbon-free energy that must be operational by 2029. These proposals can include solar, wind (offshore or land based), hydro, geothermal, biomass, nuclear, green gas, and battery energy storage systems or hybrids of all of them.

In a news release issued Tuesday, the TVA, a corporate power supplier owned by the federal government, said the request was “one of the largest clean energy procurement requests in the nation.”

“We are taking this bold, decisive action because TVA is uniquely positioned to lead in reducing carbon emissions for the region and the nation,” said Jeff Lyash, TVA president and CEO. “This announcement is a clear signal to our industry, our partners, and our nation that we need to move further and faster, together, to make a cleaner future a reality.”

Proposals for the project must be submitted by October. TVA plans to make selections for the project by early 2023. More details are available on the TVA website.

The project is part of TVA’s push to reduce carbon levels across its system. The provider plans to reduce its 2005 carbon levels by 70 percent by 2030, plans to have reduced its carbon footprint by 80 percent by 2035, and be carbon free by 2050. 

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MLGW: Be Ready for “Substantial” Bill Increases

Photo by Ant Rozetsky on Unsplash

Memphis Light Gas & Water (MLGW) customers can expect their electricity bill to rise “substantially“ this summer, the utility said Thursday.

MLGW said customers can expect their electric bills to rise by 20 percent to 40 percent on average, depending on consumption. This could translate to bills rising by by $30 to $60 per month.   

“The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and utility industries across the globe are experiencing fuel-market challenges in the face of high natural gas and coal prices, summer supply concerns, and an increase in electricity demand,” reads a statement from MLGW. “Due to increasing TVA fuel rates combined with increasing summer electricity consumption, MLGW customers will see summer electric bills increase substantially.”

MLGW said air conditioning accounts for most of summer electricity costs. The utility  recommends setting thermostats to 78 degrees or above for maximum savings. To find more energy conservation tips, visit mlgw.com/conserve.

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Sun Shine

Photo: Cornelius20 | Dreamstime.com

Solar power is not blazing hot in Memphis or Tennessee, but some rays of light promise the dawn of its brighter future here.

Barriers to solar power do exist in Memphis and Tennessee (as critics outlined in our previous story), but moves are underway to build the sector here and ingrain it as a sustainable portion of our power system. This story endeavors to tell that side of solar.

“We look at [solar power] two ways,” Scott Fiedler, a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) spokesman, said last week. “It’s green and green, green for money and green for the environment.”

Green Invest
We opened our “Sun Block” cover story by hypothetically hooking up Ford Motor Company’s massive Blue Oval City project straight to TVA’s current electricity grid. Ford plans for its electric truck factory to be carbon-neutral when it opens in 2025, though nearly half (45 percent) of TVA’s grid is a mix of coal (19 percent) and natural gas (26 percent). To bridge the gap, Ford will manage some of their carbon-neutral goals on their own. The Haywood County campus was designed for the potential use of geothermal, solar, and wind power.

For the rest, the company will likely depend on TVA and its Green Invest program. Green Invest is TVA’s largest solar-power program with the highest profile, involving the most money building the biggest projects, and the most likely to knock the most carbon from more carbon footprints. (It was also the largest omission from “Sun Block.”)

For TVA, Green Invest is an economic development tool attracting businesses, jobs, and investments. It’s something of a green-energy match-making program. Through it, TVA connects companies with environmental goals to solar-project developers throughout the Tennessee Valley. Since 2018, Fiedler said Green Invest has attracted more than $3 billion in investment through the TVA service area from companies seeking solar — companies like Google, Jack Daniel’s, Facebook, and others.

The program was used to bring a large-scale, 150-megawatt solar farm to Millington. That $140 million project will provide energy for a Facebook data center across the state in Gallatin, Tennessee. Green Invest has also been used by non-business entities like the city of Knoxville and Vanderbilt University to build solar facilities. Like the one headed for Millington, many of these solar installations are not built close to the entities that will use them. Knoxville’s project, for example, will be built in Walls, Mississippi.

Bryan Jacob, solar program director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), said such arrangements might lead some energy consumers to believe that the solar farm down the street will power their street lights. However, electrons follow physics, he said, and you really can’t trace where they will flow. He said, “power off that solar panel in northern Mississippi is not going to make its way to Knoxville.” But Knoxville can still feel good about sourcing solar, no matter where it comes from, Jacob said.

“It is legitimate,” he said of renewable energy credits, the accounting mechanism that allows Knoxville to take credit for cutting carbon in East Tennessee with a solar farm in DeSoto County, Mississippi. For one, he said, without the credits, the Mississippi solar farm might not have been built at all, leaving more carbon in the air. What’s more, many cities might not be able to find the open acreage in their footprints to build a massive solar farm. Placing them somewhere else makes them more affordable and, thus, achievable.

TVA Generation Flexibility Program
In August 2019, TVA began allowing the local power companies it serves (such as Memphis Light, Gas and Water – MLGW) to generate 5 percent of their power needs through sources like wind, solar, or natural gas.

However, locals can only use the Generation Flexibility program if they’ve signed one of TVA’s 20-year “long-term partnership agreements.” Jacob said about 140 of the 153 local utilities TVA works with have signed the agreement. MLGW has not signed the contract, as it weighs the decision to stay with TVA as a power provider or leave it.

In August 2021, East Tennessee’s Loudon Utility Board (LUB) used the program to begin work on the Dancing Horse Solar project. That 7.5-megawatt facility is expected to “power over 1,000 homes with carbon-free energy and will assist LUB in controlling rates with customers.” The board also hopes to leverage the renewable energy credits that come with the installation to “attract and retain industrial customers to this part of Tennessee.”

Photo: Alphaspirit | Dreamstime.com

Solar at Home
Today, solar panels are mostly an exotic feature on Memphis homes or businesses. When Nike and Ikea added solar panels to their campuses, it made headlines in this newspaper.

Chris Koczaja, president and CEO of LightWave Solar and president of the Tennessee Solar Energy Industries Association (TenneSEIA), said without a financial incentive for solar or net metering (in which electricity flows in and out of a home) in Tennessee, “there’s no financial payback” to doing smaller-scale solar projects.

“It is either altruistic or based on resiliency because now that I’ve got solar and [battery] storage, I’ve got my own little microgrid,” Koczaja said. “So, when these big storms come through, I’ve got power generation available for my home. [Going solar in Tennessee] is really looking at those opportunities, but they’re much fewer and farther between.”

TVA ended its Green Power Providers program at the end of 2019. The program bought electricity from those with independent solar systems, like homeowners, who did not use all of it themselves. MLGW continued the program but reduced payments for that excess solar power from a retail rate to a wholesale rate.

It also instituted an electric service availability fee (of about $12 per month) for solar users. But MLGW said the fee is equal to the flat monthly customer charge now paid by regular MLGW electricity customers. The solar fee exists because MLGW’s monthly charges for electricity don’t cover the cost of serving its customers, said Becky Williamson, MLGW’s strategic marketing coordinator.

“When customers generate their own electricity, they’re buying less from us,” Williamson said. “We’re not made whole. So, as a public utility, we decided in late 2016 to add this charge.”

A common comparison for these fees among solar advocates is a grocery store charging a customer more for tomatoes because they grow some of their own tomatoes at home.

“So, I generate some of my power — but not all of my power — at home and they are going to tax me for what I buy at MLGW?” said Jacob, the solar program director with SACE. “It doesn’t sit right with me.”

Fiedler from TVA said the legacy Green Power Providers program still has 69 participants in Shelby County. Williamson from MLGW said applications for the program here, however, have “exploded” in the years after TVA ended the Green Power Providers program.

In its “on” years, the program would yield an average of 19 applications, of which maybe eight would be built, she said. In 2020, 85 applications for solar projects were filed. In 2021, 117 were filed. So far this year, MLGW has received 40 applications for solar projects, on pace to beat 2021’s record year for such projects.

“When critics say that TVA closing the program really disrupted the solar market, we’re not finding that to be true in Memphis at all,” Williamson said. “We have far more customers interconnecting now behind the meter than we ever had under the year of TVA’s incentive program, even back to when it paid as much as 12 cents above the retail rate.”

Scammy predators roam the solar space, said TenneSEIA’s Koczaja, promising deals (many on the internet) that seem too good to be true — because they are. Some solar companies will install shabby panels that won’t work or will con a customer into believing their new solar system will somehow be paid for by the government.

“It’s difficult because on one side you’ll see there is a lot more [solar] activity,” said Koczaja. “But on the other side, some of that activity or a good portion of it maybe shouldn’t be happening because of the predatory sales practices.”

To address that problem, TVA recently launched its Green Connect program. It is a network of solar contractors vetted by TVA to ensure they are insured, licensed, bonded, and will do an installation up to TVA standards.

MLGW and TVA customers do, however, have a solar option that doesn’t require installing a single black panel on their homes. That option is TVA’s Green Switch program. Like businesses getting credit for building solar farms elsewhere, customers can buy blocks of renewable power made elsewhere on TVA’s grid. The blocks are $2 each, and with each one TVA adds 200 kilowatt hours of renewable energy to its grid.

Customers can buy as many blocks of green power as they like. A Green Switch calculator on TVA’s website will show you how many blocks you’d need to offset all or part of your monthly electricity usage. For a monthly bill of $115 (1,200 kilowatts), for example, you’d need to buy six blocks of Green Switch power for $12.

Around 1,000 MLGW customers participate in Green Switch, buying about 465,000 kilowatt hours of renewable (not just solar) energy each month.

Back in the Day
Though still rare here, solar is not new around Memphis.

In an April ribbon cutting, onlookers eyed more than 4,160 black panels lounging like a silent battalion of backyard sunbathers at Agricenter International. It was the largest solar site in the state at the time, and its panels were the first in Tennessee to move side to side, following the sun. It was expected that over the next 25 years, the panels would remove tons of toxins from the air, equivalent to taking 5,000 cars off the road or planting 7,500 acres of trees.

“This solar farm will not solve America’s energy needs, but this farm and others like it are undoubtedly part of a long-term, more sustainable future,” said then-Agricenter chairman Bill Gillon at the time. That time was April 2012, 10 years ago.

Agricenter’s $4.3 million array was built and owned by Silicon Ranch, a company founded by former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. The company gave Agricenter 10 years to decide if they wanted to buy the solar farm. Ten years ago, then-Agricenter President John Charles Wilson said his organization would buy it if it was making money like it was supposed to.

Current Agricenter President John Butler said Agricenter has not yet decided to buy the solar farm. But he says it does bring in revenue from the land lease agreement with Silicon Ranch, provides power for the campus, and more.

“You’ve got 100,000 cars that pass the campus every day [on Walnut Grove]; you’ve got thousands of kids on the campus,” said Butler. “So [the solar farm] is a really good opportunity to incorporate it not only in our education but in our research.”

For many, Agricenter’s installation was the first solar farm they’d ever seen. But even back then solar panels were not new to Memphis. Agricenter’s panels were made just across town at the Sharp Manufacturing Company of America.

Between 2003 and 2010, Sharp made 2 million solar panels here, enough to power 65,000 U.S. homes. In 2011, the factory employed nearly 500 union members to build the panels, more than double the 230 working at Sharp in 2007. Business was booming, it seemed. But the company scuttled solar-panel production here and at a plant in Wales in 2014 under a restructuring of its solar business.

A major milestone for Tennessee solar was 2009’s Volunteer State Solar Initiative. Introduced by Bredesen, the program used $62.5 million from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to establish the Tennessee Solar Institute. That entity designed and built the West Tennessee Solar Farm in Haywood County, helped fund 171 solar installations across the state, trained 350 in a state solar workforce development class, and gave technical help to solar companies.

“This statewide initiative puts Tennessee in a leading role nationally to promote and capitalize on the solar industry and in turn curb our nation’s dependence on foreign oil,” then-Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Murfreesboro) said at the time (2009).

The West Tennessee Solar Farm, by the way, was built in part to help market the Memphis Regional Megasite to prospective companies. That site, of course, will become Ford’s clean-energy Blue Oval City campus.

TVA’s Fiedler said he couldn’t speak to specifics of Tennessee’s deal with Ford, especially whether the company was attracted by its Green Invest program. But he could say that “TVA has made our region the premier destination for businesses who want to achieve their sustainability goals.”

Global and National Perspectives
The world is still pretty dim when it comes to solar. According to the latest data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), solar power supplied just a bit over 5 percent of the world’s electricity last year.

But there’s no denying that solar power has turned a market corner and is hurtling toward the future at a breakneck pace. Consider that record numbers of solar installations have been installed all over the world in the last two years, even as the pandemic slowed materials production and gunked up supply chains.

For perspective, in 2010 about 17 gigawatts of solar power capacity was added. In 2021, 172 gigawatts of new solar installations were built. By the end of last year, more than half (57 percent) of solar installations were in Asia, 21 percent were in Europe, and 16 percent were in the Americas, according to the federal National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

China leads the way as the unmatched global champion for solar installations. Last year alone, China added nearly 55 gigawatts of capacity for solar energy, nearly a third of all new solar power installations in the world. In the first quarter of 2022, China added 13.2 gigawatts of solar, a 148 percent increase in solar production from the same period last year. Still, China (at around 4.5 percent) ranks just below the global average (5 percent) for solar as a percentage of its total electricity generation.

Though the United States’ solar market was second only to China’s last year, the U.S. installed 23.6 gigawatts of solar last year, not even half of China’s increases. The U.S. total solar capacity was 120 gigawatts last year, less than half of China’s 309 total gigawatts.

The U.S. also falls slightly behind the global average of solar in its overall electricity mix (at 4 percent) behind China, the United Kingdom, South Korea, South Africa, and Morocco, according to the IEA. Australia leads the way globally on using solar, as nearly 15 percent of all its energy came from solar last year. The top five is rounded out by Spain, Greece, Honduras, and the Netherlands.

But if California were a country, it would top this list. The Golden State’s total electric generation mix is 25 percent solar. Other U.S. states would top Australia on this list, too. Behind California is Massachusetts (at 19.7 percent), Nevada (at 18 percent), Hawaii (at 17.1 percent), and Vermont (at 16.12 percent).

Oh, and how does Tennessee rank against other states on solar? It sits at 43rd place. The Volunteer State’s percentage of total energy from solar is 0.0056 percent, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA). That’s enough solar to power 61,904 of the state’s 2.4 million homes.

It’s still enough, however, to have 109 solar companies in the state that employ 3,948 people. The total investment of Tennessee’s 608 megawatts of installed solar power is about $918 million, according to the SEIA. However, the agency projects Tennessee’s solar capacity will more than double over the next five years (to 1,314 megawatts) and rank 22nd nationally.

Note: This story is a companion piece to “Sun Block,” our cover story from March on solar in Tennessee and the South. That story largely outlined challenges and barriers to solar power here. This story focuses on the opportunities for solar and the investments being made in it, and it frames Memphis in the global and national context of solar power.

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Council Wants Another Review of TVA’s Coal Ash Removal Plan

A coal ash pond at TVA's Allen Fossil Plant. (Credit: Southern Environmental Law Center)

A Memphis City Council committee wants another formal review of Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) plan to dump coal ash here, citing concerns from residents and a murky process with little cooperation from the power provider. 

Nearly 3.5 million cubic yards (nearly 707 million gallons or 2,169 acre feet) of coal ash were left behind when the Allen Fossil Plant stopped generating electricity in 2018. 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 strands 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. The toxins were deemed a threat to the Memphis Sand Aquifer, the source of the city’s famously pure drinking water, and TVA made plans to remove the coal ash. 

But the TVA failed to tell the council in 2020 just where they’d dump the coal ash. The site was revealed in 2021 as the South Shelby Landfill and the destination was criticized as it would bring trucks, noise, traffic, and air pollution to neighborhoods along the path. Many of those would be predominantly Black neighborhoods. 

Since then, council members said Tuesday they’ve heard myriad concerns from constituents about the plan. 

“The folks in South Memphis have urged us to ask TVA to do something that TVA seems unwilling to do,” said council member JB Smiley.  

Smiley was an original sponsor of Tuesday’s resolution, which asks for TVA to conduct a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). 

The report would “provide residents of South Memphis site-specific information about the impacts of TVA’s decision to move coal ash and to provide a meaningful opportunity for the affected community to be heard on how these impacts will affect them.” The report would give the “most current, detailed, and informative information now that the final destination and transportation plan” for the coal ash has been made public. 

Council member Chase Carlisle said while he feels someone is “looking just to beat on TVA,” he said he was “disappointed” in the dialog between TVA, Republic Services (the company that is set to haul the coal ash), and the council. Straightforward questions were not given straightforward answers, he said. Answers to follow-up questions went unanswered during the process. 

“I was very disappointed in what I thought was going to be a very transparent, ongoing dialog about how we could look for alternative solutions to an issue that concerns a great many people,” Carlisle said. “Instead it was, ‘we’re not coming back and we’re just going to move forward.’”

TVA said its previous review of the situation should stand as “no new information has become available that would change the conditions or conclusions” of it.

“Over the last five years, we have engaged with and listened to the Memphis community about the Allen restoration project,” said TVA spokesman Scott Brooks. “We share the same objectives of prioritizing safety and environmental stewardship while completing the project in a timely manner.

“We are fulfilling our promise to protect the Memphis aquifer, safely remove the coal ash and store it in a highly-engineered, lined landfill, and restore the Allen site for the benefit of the community.”

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Cohen Bill Would Likely Lower TVA CEO Salary

TVA president and CEO Jeff Lyash. (Credit: Toby Sells)

A new bill would likely lower the pay for Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) CEO, bringing the controversial salary down to a level comparable with those of CEOs at other public utilities. 

TVA CEO Jeff Lyash made $9.9 million last year. His base salary of $1.1 million was upped from a series of bonuses after he helped the federal utility meet or exceed some long-term and short-term corporate goals. His salary makes Lyash the highest-paid federal employee, far outpacing even the U.S. President’s pay of $400,000.

TVA has long defended its pay. For one, it says, salaries are not paid with taxpayer dollars but with revenue from electricity sales. Also, TVA has said pay, especially for its CEO, must be high to recruit and retain leaders who could make such salaries at other companies. 

See our interactive infographic here.

“The entire industry is competing for this talent as we all work toward a collective goal of a carbon-free energy future,” TVA spokesman Scott Brooks said in a statement. “That’s why we routinely benchmark with other utility peers to create a competitive compensation system. This ensures we have a well-rounded, diverse and skilled workforce that can deliver the outcomes our customers expect, including keeping rates low.”

However, TVA has been heavily criticized on the compensation. In 2020, President Donald Trump called Lyash’s pay “ridiculous” and threatened (but failed) to cut that pay “by a lot.” 

In February, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) filed a bill to make TVA’s top salaries more transparent. The bill would require the government-owned corporation to list salary information for any employee making more than around $240,000. 

“Southeastern communities should be able to evaluate if those salaries match the service provided by TVA.”

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville)

“TVA’s top earners are paid generously, and Southeastern communities should be able to evaluate if those salaries match the service provided by TVA,” Burchett said in a statement at the time. “Compensation transparency from TVA’s key decision makers is important for maintaining the public’s trust.”

A bill filed by Cohen Friday takes the issue further, likely lowering pay for Lyash and other TVA executives. Current law only requires TVA’s salaries to be on par with any other power provider in the U.S., including private, for-profit companies. Cohen’s bill would make compensation comparable to “compensation of executives in public utilities in both the U.S. and Canada.”    

“It is past time to get realistic about TVA salaries and to do so fairly and transparently.”

Rep. Steve Cohen

“It is past time to get realistic about TVA salaries and to do so fairly and transparently,” Cohen said in a statement. “Electricity generation and transmission managed from Knoxville should not earn its CEO three times what a typical Canadian utility CEO makes. The comparison I am suggesting may open some eyes and restore some reality to compensation at TVA.”

A statement from Cohen’s office said a review by the Congressional Research Service found CEOs of “Canadian power companies make significantly less in annual total reported compensation than American CEOs.”

Salaries are not paid with taxpayer dollars but with revenue from electricity sales.

In May 2020, former Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander — a longtime TVA supporter — claimed (in a Knoxville News-Sentinel opinion piece) that Lyash’s salary ranked in the bottom fourth among “big utility CEO salaries.” 

“The Tennessee Valley Authority plays in the big leagues.”

former Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander

“The Tennessee Valley Authority plays in the big leagues,” Alexander said. “It is our country’s largest public utility, a $10 billion company serving 10 million residents in seven states. Big utilities pay big salaries to attract the best executives.”

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Sun Block: Memphis’ Hard Road to More Solar Power

Vaclav Volrab | Dreamstime.com

Blue Oval City, the planned automotive assembly plant operated by Ford Motor Company and SK Innovation, supercharged local imaginations. Jobs, business, and money — sure — but this project could allow West Tennessee to be a rugged, “built-Ford-tough” cowboy from the past and Captain Planet for the future at the same time.

The project proves Ford Motor Co. is dead serious about that marriage of ideas. The 1,500-acre campus will cost $5.6 billion to build, the biggest manufacturing investment in the company’s history. The planned megacampus in Haywood County is the first Ford will build “in more than a generation.”

This bold pivot to electric vehicles was a hard-to-miss shift in the wind. It’s a massive bet that customers still want the mythical, American self-reliance projected by its iconic F-150 truck — but they also want it without the gas-guzzling, planet-choking, tailpipe fog of most cars made in the last 100 years.

The moment was bold enough that Ford CEO Bill Ford told reporters, “We’re on the cusp of a revolution,” one that would help “build a better future for America.” It doesn’t stop at trucks.

“The all-new megacampus just outside of Memphis, called Blue Oval City, aspires to have 100 percent renewable energy, zero waste to landfill, and reusing every drop of water, to ensure our planet is in it for the long haul,” Ford Motor Co. tweeted at the time.

But if nothing changes, and without help from other programs, the all-electric F-150 Lightnings that roll off the line here first will be ready for antique Tennessee license plates by the time that plant is powered entirely by renewable energy. Blue Oval City sits squarely in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) service area, and that power provider says it won’t be carbon-neutral until 2050, about 25 years after the Ford plant is expected to open.   

If TVA’s power mix remains the same, that cutting-edge factory — and those Earth-saving trucks — will be charged with a mix heavy with nuclear power, coal, and natural gas. Only 14 percent of TVA’s power-generation portfolio is renewable, including hydroelectric (11 percent), wind and solar (3 percent), and some energy-efficiency programs (1 percent). But TVA says their Green Invest turnkey solar program “can help businesses like Ford achieve their sustainability goals using 100 percent renewable energy.” TVA says it leads its Southeastern peers with a generation portfolio that is already 63 percent carbon-free.

Throughout the Tennessee River Valley, major corporations, big Tennessee companies, cities, counties, and more have publicly stated environmental goals. They all want to reduce waste and reduce their carbon footprints, meaning they want less reliance on fossil fuels and more on renewables, like wind and solar.

TVA knows this, according to internal documents, and considers it a threat to its bottom line, one it means to fix. If this sounds off, U.S. House members thought so, too, enough to launch an investigation into TVA’s business practices on renewables.

Joined at the Hip on Climate Change
Memphis and Shelby County’s climate goals around renewable energy will depend much on TVA, and some say that could be problematic.

Greenhouse gas emissions from energy accounted for nearly half (46 percent) of all of the Memphis area’s total emissions, according to the latest environmental inventory taken back in 2016 for the Memphis Area Climate Action Plan adopted in 2019. Energy emissions include those in buildings: houses, apartments, stores, salons, banks, museums, restaurants, warehouses, factories, and more. The rest were emissions from two other major categories: transportation (52 percent) and waste (like landfills and wastewater treatment) at 12 percent.

The climate plan — approved by the Memphis City Council, the Shelby County Commission, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris — commits these governments to developing renewable energy generation at key facilities (like solar panels on government buildings) and/or buying renewables through energy certificates, green tariff products, and participating in community shared solar projects.

But those are details. The plan and, therefore, everyone who approved it, agreed on one thing: “grid decarbonization — or increasing the carbon-free energy sources in our electric supply — has the greatest impact on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in our community.” They all agreed, too, that there was little they could do about it.

“As noted in the discussion of community-wide education targets, a large portion of these 2020 reductions are expected as a result of actions outside local control,” reads the plan, “for example, TVA’s planned increase in carbon-free energy sources in their energy portfolio.”

To see just how closely the city’s goals are dependent on TVA, consider their timelines to carbon-free energy. The Memphis Area Climate Action Plan calls for the electric grid to be 80 percent carbon-free by 2035. So do TVA’s plans. (Even though President Joe Biden’s climate goals want totally carbon-free energy by 2035.) Memphis-area leaders want a completely carbon-free electric grid by 2050. So does TVA.

A mix of solar and wind projects helped the TVA to reduce carbon emissions by 63 percent from 2005 to 2020. But solar leads the way in the Southeast, and TVA says it’ll be mainly solar projects that will aid it in its future reductions.

But environmental watchdog groups claim TVA has thrown up roadblocks to solar projects, especially for homeowners and business owners, to protect its finances. The reasons are complicated, but one thing is clear to Maggie Shober, research director with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE).

“TVA is behind,” Shober said on solar energy. “TVA is behind the Southeast, and the Southeast is behind the rest of the country.”

However, TVA says it is now building the “energy system of the future,” which aspires to net-zero emissions by 2050 and to add 10,000 megawatts of solar.

Where Do We Stand?
When it comes to solar, Tennessee (with about 390 megawatts of solar capacity) ranks third to last in the Southeast, ahead of only Mississippi (362 megawatts) and Alabama (319 megawatts). Florida leads the region with 7,765 megawatts of solar capacity, followed by North Carolina (7,460 megawatts) and Georgia (3,444 megawatts). All of this is according to late-2021 figures from the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Among power providers in the Southeast with more than 500,000 customers, TVA ranks 10th of 13 on solar watts per customer, according to SACE’s annual “Solar in the Southeast” report. The Southeast average of watts per customer is 423 watts. TVA provides 105 solar watts per customer, according to the report. The highest is North Carolina’s Duke Energy with 1,952 solar watts per customer. The lowest is Tampa, Florida’s Seminole Electric Co-Op, providing only 45 solar watts per customer.   

Among TVA’s biggest Tennessee customers, Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW) ranks second for solar watts per customer. MLGW offers 66 solar watts per customer, only slightly behind Nashville Electric Service, offering 67 solar watts per customer. These figures fall below the Southeast average of 423 solar watts per customer and the TVA average of 90 watts per customer hour.

So, Tennessee ranks near the bottom on solar. TVA ranks near the bottom on solar. And MLGW ranks below TVA’s average for access to solar power.

“TVA will be quadrupling solar capacity by 2024, yet continues to trail the other large utility systems in the Southeast,” reads the SACE report. “By 2024, SACE projects TVA to reach the 2020 region average.”

Winds Don’t Blow
In 2010, Houston-based Clean Line Energy Partners answered a call from the U.S. Department of Energy for a new project to modernize the country’s electric transmission structure, increase domestic energy sources, support new jobs, and do it all without taxpayer money. Clean Line proposed a $2.5 billion, 700-mile-long transmission line from Oklahoma to end at a connector near Millington. 

If the deal was done, 3,500 megawatts of clean wind power from Oklahoma and Texas would have pumped through Memphis and into the TVA service area and beyond starting in 2020. But it wasn’t. So, it’s not. And TVA was the deal-breaker.

The connector project alone was valued at $259 million. It had broad support here from government, civic, and business groups. It was even supported by the Memphis and Shelby County Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) with $23.3 million in tax breaks, which the group said would yield $37.1 million in benefits back to the community.

Then-Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Maryville) opposed the project, claiming the power was unreliable and that, over decades, it would increase TVA rates. Then-Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland (R-Millington) fired back at Alexander, a fellow Republican, claiming the project would be a financial boon for the area and that Alexander “put his own agenda ahead of what’s best for West Tennessee.”

For TVA, though, the clean-energy deal got down to economics. After nearly seven years of study — with the company spending money to move the project forward — TVA said it didn’t really need any extra power, no matter the source.

Bill Johnson, TVA president at the time, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press in 2017, “We’re looking at a power demand in the future that is flat, or declining slightly, so we don’t anticipate needing major additions to power generation for a decade or more.”

While TVA said the move did not make financial sense at the time, it welcomed Clean Line to come back with a new proposal. They did not. The company withdrew its proposal at the end of 2017 and sold the land for the project to NextEra Energy, the world’s largest utility company, to divert more wind power to the Southwest.

Environmentalists blasted TVA’s “thanks, but no thanks” on the wind-energy project. Others, like Alexander, celebrated it as a solid example of financial stewardship. Either way, it remains TVA’s highest-profile example of saying “thanks, but no thanks” to renewables, especially ones it does not own.  

A Rate-Making Rubik’s Cube
While the Clean Line dismissal was a high-dollar, high-profile deal conducted largely in public, some say TVA is still blocking renewables, especially solar, in a smaller, more complicated way. But it’s a way that directly affects and involves its customers.

In 2018, TVA approved a “grid access fee.” With it, TVA charges MLGW the fee to use its electricity grid and 7,000 miles of transmission lines. If demand for TVA’s power will stay the same or go down in the future, as former TVA CEO Johnson said in 2017, then that means fewer dollars for TVA as expenses rise. Fixed fees, like the grid access charge, ensure a steadier stream of dollars, instead of the up-and-down whims of market demand. 

The Sierra Club explained grid access fees this way: “TVA’s board of directors today approved a mandatory fixed fee that will force customers to pay more on their electric bill before they even flip a switch.”

MLGW spokeswoman Stacey Greenberg said the utility, TVA’s largest customer, paid $59.1 million in grid access fees in the 2021 fiscal year. When asked if those fees were passed on to MLGW customers, Greenberg said, “As stated in the response to the first question, the change was a revenue neutral change at the system level and MLGW did not change the fixed or variable portions of any retail rates.” After press time, Greenberg clarified that the fees are passed on to MLGW customers. She said the average residential customer pays about $6.24 each year for the grid access fee.

So, what does this have to do with solar? These fees will remain the same no matter how much solar you sell back to the grid. Solar advocates say these fees undercut savings on electric bills and, therefore, cut the amount of clean, renewable solar power that businesses and homeowners will install on their buildings.

But in 2018, TVA said solar projects for specific sites were not fair and that its current energy prices “over-incentivize consumer installation of [distributed energy sources like solar] leading to uneconomic results for the people of the Valley as a whole.”

“Over the next decade, forecasted load is expected to be flat or declining, resulting in little need for new energy sources,” according to a 2018 TVA report. “At the same time, consumer interest in renewable energy continues to rise. The imbalance created by uneconomic [on-site solar projects] investment means that costs are shifted to consumers throughout the Valley who cannot afford [on-site solar projects] or otherwise choose not to invest in [on-site solar projects].”

But it came to light that dissing these solar projects was about more than economic justice for TVA. A Freedom of Information Act request by SACE found an internal TVA PowerPoint presentation. It claimed that distributed energy resources (like solar panels on homes or businesses) present “a threat to our business model.”   

“Essentially all ‘normal’ large commercial customers would benefit economically from some amount of on-site solar installations,” reads the PowerPoint published by SACE.

The presentation then listed several major corporations with renewable energy goals, companies like McDonald’s, Walmart, Amazon, Cargill, FedEx, Google, Unilever, Hilton, and more. TVA identified its customers with renewable goals. If they met their goals on renewables, the utility projected losses of up to $500 million. If they passed the grid access fees, “the number of economic [solar] installations decrease by [about] 40 percent.”

It wasn’t until January 2022 that all of it caught the attention of members of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Four ranking Democrats on the committee issued a letter to TVA president and CEO Jeff Lyash that month. They sought an explanation of TVA’s rate changes and whether they “were intended to interfere with the deployment of distributed energy resources.” The group also wanted “an explanation for TVA’s comparative underinvestment in solar and wind generation.”

“TVA has also interfered with the adoption of renewable energy by its commercial and residential customers,” reads the letter. “TVA has also permitted local power companies to impose new fees on distributed solar generation in order to lessen the potential decrease in TVA load that may occur through the adoption of [behind the meter] generation.”

In a February 22nd letter to the House committee, TVA said, “The 2018 rate change that included the grid access charge (GAC) better reflects the wholesale cost of energy and recognizes the value of the grid’s reliability and associated costs. The primary objectives of the 2018 rate change were to continue to improve the alignment of wholesale rates with their underlying costs to serve and to facilitate measured, managed changes in LPCs’ [local power company’s] retail rate structures.”

TVA says it will achieve its clean-energy goals, especially the 10,000 megawatts of added solar, in a way that will not “put the financial burden on other consumers while maintaining our 100 percent reliable delivery of electricity to Memphis and Shelby County.”

“Reliable electricity is extremely important, not only for homes and businesses in our region but also for attracting jobs and industry,” TVA spokesman Scott Brooks said in a statement last week. “While other regions like Texas had blackouts and failing power grids in the last two February storms, TVA’s delivery of power to Memphis remained intact. And we’re doing all this while holding wholesale power rates steady for a third year in a row, with a commitment in our strategic plan to maintain rates for the next decade.”

Power and Water
Another way TVA could block renewables, according to an ongoing lawsuit, is through the length of TVA’s new contracts. These 20-year contracts replace previous seven-year contracts, enough for plaintiffs in the suit to call them “never-ending.” The plaintiffs — Protect Our Aquifer (POA), Alabama Center for Sustainable Energy, and Appalachian Voices — say these long-term contracts lock customers in and lock out other providers who may be less reliant on fossil fuels than TVA.

“There are growing calls in the Tennessee Valley for cheaper, cleaner, and renewable power options — but the Tennessee Valley Authority is able to ignore these demands through the use of its long-term agreement program,” said Southern Environmental Law Center Tennessee Office director Amanda Garcia. “These contracts automatically renew each year and require 20-years notice to terminate, making it practically impossible for local power companies to leave TVA. By locking its customers into these never-ending contracts, TVA is able to bankroll new fossil fuel plants and slow-walk its transition to clean energy solutions — like solar and wind power, energy efficiency, and battery storage technology — that are effective, affordable, and available right now.”

As for the public’s interest, POA executive director Sarah Houston said TVA’s new natural-gas-power Allen Combined Cycle Plant is a threat to the sustainability of the Memphis area’s drinking water. That plant used 653 million gallons of water in 2020, according to a report in The Commercial Appeal, to cool its turbines.

That water comes from the Memphis Sand Aquifer, albeit delivered from the Davis and Allen well fields a few miles from the gas plant. While the pumping is not directly next to the toxic coal ash pits, Scott Banbury, conservation program coordinator and lobbyist with the Tennessee Sierra Club, said drawing water there could still bring toxic elements into the aquifer. In general, though, Houston said, “with renewables, you have a lot less local water use and water impact compared to frack-gas plants and coal plants.”

In August 2021, United States District Judge Thomas Parker dismissed TVA’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

“The LTP was developed in collaboration with local power companies, and 146 of them have voluntarily signed the contract implementing it,” TVA said in a statement. “TVA disagrees with the allegations and will appropriately reply through the court.”

Big Decision
All of this comes in the backdrop of MLGW’s historic decision on whether or not to break with TVA and find another power provider. In its search, MLGW makes it clear it wants more solar power, too.

MLGW’s request for proposals says it’s looking for someone to install 1,000 megawatts of solar power, divided equally between two facilities in North Memphis and South Memphis. 

As MLGW’s search goes on, the path to more renewable energy for Memphians is still unclear, but with a commitment to more solar power, the sun may still shine on a more renewable, less fossil-fuel-dependent future. 

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Tennessee EV Charging Network Gets $88M Jolt

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Charging stations for electric vehicles are headed to gas stations, food stores, and truck stops across Tennessee thanks, in part, to $88.3 million from the federal government. 

The state will get more than $13 million in the current fiscal year to begin the program, part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) announced Thursday by the U.S. Department of Energy. The rest of the funds will be delivered over the next five years. 

Tennessee’s share of the funds is part of a larger, $7.5 billion effort from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to build a nationwide system of charging stations. The move is hoped to make electric vehicles reliable for short and long distance trips.    

”For too long, Tennessee has had unreliable and inconsistent charging facilities along its roads and highways, inconveniencing drivers and putting a drag on our regional economy,” U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) said in a statement. “These overdue investments will strengthen our state’s critical infrastructure — paving the way for cleaner, easier driving and supporting good-paying union jobs.”

The country’s current system now has a network of about 100,000 charging stations. The Biden Adminstration’s goal with the new funding is to expand that network to 500,000 chargers. 

The new money directs states to work with the private sector to build this network. This is “best achieved by harnessing the existing nationwide network of refueling locations,” according to lobbyists for refueling stations. The bill gives priority for charging stations at “travel centers, food retailers, and convenience stores,” according to the National Association of Truck Stop Operators (NATSO) and the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America (SIGMA). The bill will not allow other companies to install charging stations and states cannot install them at rest areas.

The truck stop organization says its existing network offers convenience, amenities, security, food, and competitive and transparent pricing, all usually less a mile from an interstate. Gas station advocates say their stores will be able to offer charging in “communities where most residents cannot reliably charge their electric vehicles overnight” and that they are more suited for quick-stop charging that may not require a complete fill up.   

“Our industry understands that electric vehicle drivers will expect their driving and refueling experience to be as safe, seamless, and predictable as it is today,” reads a joint statement from NATSO and SIGMA. “There is no ‘range anxiety’ today for drivers of gas-powered vehicles. That is achievable for electric vehicles as well.”

The new network is hoped to help grow electric vehicle sales in the U.S. to 50 percent of the entire automobile market by 2030.    

”The U.S. market share of plug-in electric vehicle sales is only one-third the size of the Chinese [electric vehicle] market,” reads a statement form theWhiteHouse. “The President believes that must change.”

Credit: Tennessee Valley Authority/ TVA’s Electric Highway Coalition

 Last year, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) launched the Electric Highway Coalition to bolster the electric charging network across its service area and into other states. That coalition has grown to 14 other energy providers across 29 states and the District of Columbia.  This push is hoped to install a network of fast charging stations across these areas with stations located less than 100 miles from each other.  

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U.S. House Members Want Answers on TVA

TVA president and CEO Jeff Lyash. (Credit: Toby Sells)

Some U.S. House members criticized the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) last week, concerned that ratepayers pay too much and that the agency is not working hard enough on renewable energy. 

Four ranking Democrats in the House Energy and Commerce Committee issued a letter to TVA president and CEO Jeff Lyash last week. It said TVA’s business practices “appeared inconsistent” with the federal agency’s law-bound commitment to provide low-cost power. The lawmakers were also concerned “that TVA is interfering with the deployment of renewable and distributed energy resources.” 

As for energy prices, the committee members worried they were too high and impacted low-income households the most. For proof, the members pointed to a study from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE). It found that half of low-income Memphians pay more than 13.2 percent of their annual incomes on energy and more than a quarter of them pay more than 25 percent on energy each year. The study noted, however, that low-income Tennesseans pay some “of the lowest energy rates in the United States” and blamed high bills on homes that are not energy efficient.

TVA said its rates are now lower than 80 percent of other U.S. utilities; industrial rates are lower than 95 percent of them. The agency has kept rates flat for 10 years, TVA said in a statement, even as fuel costs rose in that time. 

“Even with TVA’s low energy costs, we recognize the challenge of high-energy burden in our region,” TVA said in a statement. “TVA is in partnership with 153 local power companies and other organizations to help address the root-causes of this issue, including the need to weatherize and implement energy efficiency measures in buildings and housing.”       

In 2018, TVA lowered power rates 50 cents per kilowatt hour and charged local utilities (like Memphis Light, Gas & Water [MLGW]) a fixed fee to access the TVA electricity grid, the letter said. Locals, like MLGW, passed those fixed costs on to ratepayers who could, then, pay even more, sometimes even if they used less energy. The House committee worried the move would deter energy efficiency deployments, and maintain TVA’s electricity demand and revenues.

House members said, too, that TVA may be stalling the implementation of renewable energy initiatives by residential and industrial customers. For proof, the letter pointed to internal TVA documents that said its grid access fee would “curtail the deployment of solar projects by 40 percent.”

Finally, the group called TVA’s plan to decarbonize by 2050 “unambitious” and not in line with President Joe Biden’s goal of carbon-free energy by 2035. But TVA said it is making strides, embracing “emerging technologies, from carbon capture to advanced nuclear, while supporting national clean energy initiatives, such as a robust electric vehicle charging infrastructure.”