The TVA will also invest $350 million on clean energy projects. Once fully implemented, the pollution controls and other required actions will address 92% of the TVA’s coal-fired power plant capacity, reducing emissions of nitrogen oxide (NOx) by 69% and sulfur dioxide (SO2) by 67% from the TVA’s 2008 emissions levels. The settlement will also significantly reduce particulate matter and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
Communities near the TVA’s facilities will directly benefit from $350 million in environmental projects. These investments will advance environmental justice by reducing pollution in overburdened communities and reducing energy costs for low-income communities. The TVA is required to spend $240 million on energy efficiency initiatives including a Smart Energy Communities project that will focus on energy efficiency in low-income communities. The TVA will retrofit low-income housing with the most cost-effective energy efficiency technologies—reducing air pollution, energy use and saving residents money. The TVA will also spend $40 million to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through renewable projects such as hybrid electric charging stations and $8 million for a clean diesel and electric vehicle project for public transportation systems.
The TVA will also provide $1 million to the National Park Service and the National Forest Service to improve, protect, or rehabilitate forest and park lands that have been impacted by emissions from the TVA’s plants, including Mammoth Cave National Park and Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Headquartered in Knoxville, Tenn., the TVA operates 59 coal-fired boilers at 11 plants in Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee, and operates other energy production facilities, including hydroelectric plants. The TVA also provides wholesale power to 155 municipal and cooperative power distributors and direct service to 56 large industrial and government customers, supplying power to approximately nine million people across Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and small portions of Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
The settlement also requires the TVA to pay a civil penalty of $10 million, with Alabama and Kentucky receiving $500,000 each and Tennessee receiving $1 million. The states of Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, and three non-governmental organizations, the National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club and Our Children’s Earth Foundation, have been involved in development of this settlement and are signatories to a companion consent decree that will be lodged in federal district court in the Eastern District of Tennessee.
