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 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.
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.
