Months after the Tennessee Valley Authority committed to building a gas plant and pipeline in Middle Tennessee, the federal utility is proposing another 1.5-gigawatt fossil fuel project in East Tennessee. 

The federal utility announced Friday that it plans to build natural gas facilities to replace coal generation at its Kingston Fossil Plant, the site where the nation’s worst coal ash spill occurred in 2008.  

In a draft environmental review, TVA compares the options of gas and solar for the Kingston site. TVA says it prefers its plan for natural gas, also called methane gas due to its main, planet-warming ingredient, because it can build gas facilities faster than it can the equivalent amount of solar capacity under its current regulatory process. 

The total social costs of greenhouse gas emissions for gas would be about $6 billion more than for solar, based on one of TVA’s own calculations. But that number could be significantly higher: TVA cites the American Gas Association on the estimated climate pollution released by fracking and pipelines. 

The proposed project also includes a 122-mile pipeline that will run through eight counties and be built by Enbridge, a company that makes billions each year primarily by the operation of pipelines. 

Courtesy Enbridge

TVA’s proposed project includes a 122-mile pipeline that will cut through eight counties.

TVA has already entered into a contract called a “precedent agreement” with Enbridge — likely committing TVA to purchase gas from Enbridge’s pipeline. Last year, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit against TVA for refusing to release unredacted records related to the Kingston gas and pipeline project. SELC said that the redacted contracts did not reveal the extent of TVA’s obligations to the pipeline company. 

The proposed gas project for Kingston would also include a small solar farm — between .003 and .004 GW, or about .2% of the total project — and a storage facility. 

TVA just went through a similar process to replace coal with a gas and pipeline project for its Cumberland Fossil Plant in Middle Tennessee. This time, however, the TVA board will have to approve the final decision. 

In 2021, a short-staffed, Trump-filled TVA board voted to allow CEO Jeff Lyash to have the final say on power plant projects. Lyash signed off on the Cumberland gas project in January. Last week, the newly fully-staffed board voted to reinstate its own authority to approve or deny projects. 

TVA will be accepting public comments on its environmental review until July 3. 

The Tennessee General Assembly has passed several pieces of legislation recently that support such projects, including laws to preempt cities from blocking fossil fuel projects, define natural gas as “clean energy,” and create felony charges for pipeline protestors.