‘A real injustice’ — Communities call on TVA to cancel Kingston gas project

Three years ago, Brig Ortner was hiking north of Cookeville near a more than 300-million-year-old crater.  

They noticed something unsettling in one of their favorite spots to be outside: a sign that read “No TVA Pipelines.”  

Ortner began to research, discovering that the pipeline and energy company Enbridge was planning a gas pipeline right through the area. 

“The more and more I dug, the more I realized that it could potentially be a hazardous, dangerous project,” Ortner told WPLN News.

Caroline Eggers WPLN News

A ‘NO TVA PIPELINES’ sign sits in the yard of a Dickson County resident on September 13, 2022. Gas pipelines leak methane, a climate pollutant that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide on a 20-year timescale.

Ortner then helped found the grassroots group SageTN, which stands for Safe, Affordable, Good Energy for Tennessee.  

SageTN has helped educate communities about the pipeline project, which will stretch about 120 miles from Trousdale County to Kingston, where the Tennessee Valley Authority is building what will become one of the utility’s largest gas plants to date. 

The plant will replace or maybe even operate next to TVA’s Kingston coal plant, which was the site of a disastrous coal ash spill in 2008. TVA set up an agreement with Enbridge years before the project was finalized in 2024 amid federal criticisms over TVA’s “lack of transparency” and ability to choose a safer, “lower cost” option like solar and batteries. 

SageTN rallied with Tennessee residents and other environmental organizations against the gas project at TVA’s headquarters in Knoxville on Wednesday night. The groups called on the utility to halt the project and invest in clean energy instead.

There is now at least one precedent: TVA canceled one gas project in Cheatham County earlier this year after residents and country music star John Rich pressured the Trump administration to intervene.

Courtesy Abby Hassler/Appalachian Voices

Residents protested the Tennessee Valley Authority’s fossil fuel expansion at the utility’s headquarters in Knoxville on November 5, 2025.

TVA spokesperson Scott Brooks said people were able to make their voices heard during the rally on Wednesday.

“The process for approving the Kingston Energy Complex has been transparent and public. TVA is constructing the complex to provide reliable and flexible energy to meet growing demand in the region,” Brooks said in an email. “TVA will not own nor operate the pipeline. We will be customers.”

Enbridge recently began construction on the pipeline for the Kingston project.

“The project has received all state and federal regulatory permits to begin construction,” Art Haskins, a spokesperson for the company, said in an email. “91% of the pipeline will be constructed within the easement of an existing pipeline route to minimize environmental impact.”

Courtesy Enbridge

Enbridge is constructing a 122-mile gas pipeline from rural Middle Tennessee to Kingston, where the Tennessee Valley Authority is building a plant that will burn methane.

TVA is planning to build as many as a dozen new gas facilities across the region 

SageTN has helped educate people about the gas projects underway in Tennessee, Ortner said, while ensuring they understand the gas industry — including its terminology, like the phrase “natural gas.” 

“The term natural gas implies that this pipeline is somehow environmentally friendly,” Ortner said, referring to the Enbridge project. “When the fact of the matter is that the gas running through the pipeline is a fossil fuel.”

Gas mostly consists of methane, a combustible hydrocarbon. It is the largest source of electricity in the U.S. and second-largest source of planet-warming pollution from fuel use. 

Caroline Eggers WPLN News

Gas represented nearly 40% of total greenhouse gas emissions from fuel sources in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency.

The nation’s gas system involves drilling, multi-state pipelines and burning at power plants, compressor stations, industrial factories and homes and buildings. 

TVA has been rapidly building out its own gas infrastructure. The public utility may add as much as 10 GW of gas capacity to its grid in the next six years, between the 6 GW of official projects and 4 GW of unannounced projects on its latest transmission planning document. Some planned projects require new pipelines.  

Ortner said it’s a “real injustice” between who gets to decide how Tennesseans get their energy and then who pays for it.  

“I want people to know that there is a better world out there,” Ortner said.  

That world, perhaps, could look like electricity without the burning of fossil fuels, which is the primary driver of climate destabilization and air pollution that kills millions worldwide each year. Countries like Costa Rica, Iceland and Ethiopia have achieved nearly 100% fossil-free power. The U.S. could also achieve 100% clean electricity, according to the Department of Energy.

California, which would be the world’s fifth largest economy if it were its own country, was powered by about 67% clean electricity in 2023 and is required by state law to become 100% clean by 2045.

TVA could source all of its electricity needs from renewables and nuclear — and one study shows the utility would save money  by making that switch — but has made little progress on either in the past decade. For part of this past year, TVA’s energy mix became its least clean since 2007 as the utility faced outages at all seven of its nuclear reactors.

TVA’s energy mix peaked at 57% clean in 2020 and is not expected to be any cleaner in 2030 with its current plans for gas expansion.