TVA’S ONGOING FOSSIL FUEL PLAN SHOWS TVA IS THE FOSSIL

Even as climate change is supercharging weather extremes and driving record years for billion-dollar disasters, and even as concerns are raised repeatedly by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and environmental groups, the nation’s largest federal utility is planning once again to just trade one fossil fuel for another. TVA is merely trading coal for natural gas.

The Tennessee Valley Authority formally announced Tuesday it will begin building a gas plant to replace one of the two coal-fired generators at the Cumberland Fossil Plant in Middle Tennessee by 2026.

With plenty of doublespeak, TVA President Jeff Lyash said the proposed 1,450-megawatt gas plant should reduce carbon emissions at Cumberland by about 60% compared with the existing coal unit.

We call that doublespeak because while gas plants emit less carbon than coal-fired plants, they are not carbon free and won’t meet the nation’s goal of achieving a carbon-free power sector by 2035. What’s more, gas brings its own special danger to the planet:

One methane molecule escaped into the atmosphere, while shorter lived than carbon, is roughly 90 times more effective at trapping heat than a molecule of carbon dioxide, according to scientists.

Can we say more, not less, global warming, at least in the short term, from the six coal plants TVA has converted, or is in the process of converting, to gas?

You may have seen another story recently about the dangers of emissions from gas stoves — even new ones — in homes, and efforts by state and local policymakers to target the use of natural gas in buildings. This is, in part, a push to reduce climate-warming methane. Nearly 100 cities and counties have adopted policies that require or encourage a move away from fossil fuel-powered buildings. Well, gas-fired power plants are kitchen stoves and building furnaces on steroids in terms of methane releases.

There’s more. On the same day we brought you the story about TVA formally announcing its plan — sans any OK from the utility’s six new board members — another story on the front page proclaimed that carbon emissions grew in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.

The rise was driven by power generation and the aviation sector, as air travel rebounds from pandemic lows, IEA officials said. (Did we mention that Cumberland’s planned gas burners are like jet engines?)

And don’t think green power isn’t helping. It is.

“The rise in global CO2 emissions [in 2022] would be much larger — more than tripling to reach close to 1 billion [tons] — were it not for the major deployments of renewable energy technologies and electric vehicles around the world,” according to an IEA statement.

Georgia, unlike TVA, sees future opportunity in solar power, not gas power. Bloomberg uses Georgia and Tennessee as examples where even some red-state governors are buying in — seeing it also as a political opportunity. At least when it brings jobs.

Peach State Gov. Brian Kemp, in his successful campaign for re-election, touted a surge in green jobs across Georgia. Take the battery plant that stretches half-a-mile along a freeway northeast of Atlanta, and the Hyundai Motor Company’s $5.5 billion electric-vehicle plant being built near Savannah. Don’t forget Rivian’s plan for a $5 billion electric-vehicle plant east of Atlanta. And a Korean solar manufacturer announced Wednesday it will invest $2.5 billion to build a new plant in Cartersville and expand its Dalton plant. About 2,500 jobs will be added.

Tennessee, too, is on board, even if TVA isn’t. We have three electric vehicle makers in the Volunteer State and a fourth in the works — along with a battery maker and battery component manufacturers, including Novonix in Chattanooga.

It is the future, even if TVA spurns it. And even though not a single Republican member of Congress supported the Inflation Reduction Act, which featured $374 billion in climate-related spending. We’re looking at you, Chuck Fleischmann.

Finally, let us just mention one more reason TVA’s new board members might throw up a debate on the coal-gas conversions:

America’s residents suffered 18 climate extremes in 2022 that caused at least $1 billion in damage each. EACH. Even before the pre-Christmas winter storm (the one that brought TVA to order rolling black-outs over the holiday weekend when its fossil plants faltered), those climate extremes were tallied at more than $165 billion. Federal climate scientists expect the figure will rise closer to $170 billion.

Solar’s not ready yet, TVA says?

Then explain how an experimental drone plane weighing about same as an SUV but with the wingspan of a Boeing

747 covered with more than 17,000 solar panels has been hanging around in the sky for no fuel cost at all, powering itself. Flex your engineering skills, TVA.

But making solar and other alternative energy plans are too expensive, TVA says?

TVA already has spent $1 billion in ratepayer money on 1,500 megawatts of new natural gas plants at shuttered coal plants in Kentucky and Alabama (not counting Cumberland) and is considering yet another coal-to-gas conversion at its Kingston coal plant.

We ratepayers are spending billions to replace one fossil fuel with another. That — along with our storm costs and black-outs are not too expensive?

Maybe it’s TVA that is a fossil.