President-elect Donald Trump is poised to bring in new leadership to the Tennessee Valley Authority, prompting concerns that the nation’s largest public power company could be in for a strategy shift.
After Mr. Trump won, the renomination of three of the utility’s board members, including its chairman, stalled in the Senate confirmation process and their terms expired on Jan. 2. The three Obama-appointed board members had been proponents of moving the utility away from coal-fired power to other energy sources such as natural gas and nuclear.
Joe Ritch, a lawyer from Huntsville, Ala., who had been on the board since 2013 and chairman since 2014, said he was surprised by the Senate’s reluctance to reconfirm him and two other board members, and suspected new appointees could be much more pro-coal. Mr. Ritch said he believed Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, Mr. Trump’s pick for attorney general and a longtime ally of coal interests in his home state, blocked their re-confirmations. Mr. Sessions is a member of the Senate committee where the renominations of Obama’s board appointees stalled.
Mr. Sessions had “expressed his unhappiness” over the closure of two TVA coal plants in Alabama in recent years, said Mr. Ritch, the utility’s outgoing chairman.
Mr. Sessions’s staff didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Mike McWherter, another board member whose term expired Jan. 2, said the moves suggest “there is going to be a major shift in the leadership on this board in a very short time.”
With the terms of two more board members expiring in May, the Trump administration will be able to appoint a majority of the nine-member board to one of the biggest operators of coal-fired power in the country that supplies power to nine million consumers in seven states. TVA board members are nominated by the president, confirmed by the Senate and generally serve three-year terms.
The recent turn of events has prompted concerns among environmental groups.
John Suttles, director of regional programs for the Southern Environmental Law Center, an environmental nonprofit that pressed the TVA to reduce coal use, said new board appointees could slow down, halt or reverse the trend of using less coal, even if other sources of energy might be cheaper and better for the environment.
For much of its history, the TVA produced the majority of its energy from coal plants. But a 2011 settlement under the Clean Air Act with the Environmental Protection Agency, state environmental agencies and environmental groups required the authority to reduce coal emissions. Since 2011, the TVA has shut down 24 coal-fired units out of 59 in its energy network. It plans to close another two units this spring.
During the campaign, Mr. Trump promised coal-mining areas that he would reverse what he said were unfair regulations on coal put in place by the Obama administration, though it isn’t clear that pledge will affect the TVA.
Energy consumption in the region, like many parts of the U.S., has been flat or slightly declining in recent years, and nuclear and natural gas provide cheaper forms of energy, as well as hydroelectric.
The TVA’s strategy is in line with most other U.S. utilities that have been reducing coal use and shifting resources like natural gas because they are relatively cheaper than coal, according to Ken Rose, a Chicago-based utility consultant and research fellow at Michigan State University’s Institute of Public Utilities. A lot of coal plants are old and costly to refurbish, so utilities are closing them “for the economics of it, not the politics,” he said.
The Trump transition team hasn’t yet compiled a list of potential replacements for the TVA board members.
Tennessee Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker wrote a letter in August urging the Senate to reconfirm the Obama appointees. Mr. Alexander said he didn’t see a new board changing the TVA’s direction regarding energy sources.
The TVA’s reduction in coal use has improved air quality in many parts of Tennessee, raising health standards for residents and bringing in more tourists, he said. The current strategy of increasing nuclear and gas production “has my full support,” Mr. Alexander said.
Mr. Corker said: “Presidents put their own people in place, that’s just the consequence of the election.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tva-board-vacancies-raise-possibility-of-coal-policy-shift-1484670034