Tennessee valley authority abandons clean energy goals, extends life of aging coal plants without public input

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), America’s largest public utility, has dramatically reversed course on its clean energy commitments, choosing to keep aging coal plants running while dropping renewable energy as a priority. In a unanimous February 11 board decision, the newly Trump-appointed majority extended the operational life of two coal facilities previously slated for retirement—the Kingston Fossil Plant and Cumberland Fossil Plant—despite the agency’s own assessment that these facilities are costly and inflexible.

The policy shift comes as electricity demand surges, driven largely by artificial intelligence and data centers, which now account for 18% of TVA’s industrial load. The utility cited energy affordability for its 10 million customers as justification, yet critics note that one of Cumberland’s coal units actually failed during recent Winter Storm Fern. Notably absent from the decision-making process was meaningful public input—a stark departure from TVA’s traditional approach to major policy changes.

The reversal has significant implications beyond Tennessee Valley communities. Coal plants release harmful particulate matter and have been linked to hundreds of thousands of excess deaths nationwide, with TVA’s coal facilities ranking among the deadliest according to Sierra Club research. Environmental advocates and local residents feel betrayed, particularly given that Kingston was the site of the largest industrial coal ash spill in U.S. history in 2010. As retired professor Joe Schiller, who lives near the Cumberland plant, put it: “It contradicts everything they’ve told us about the plants in the past.”