The Tennessee Valley Authority has released a new, unconventional 25-year draft integrated resource plan (IRP), including a draft environmental impact statement, replacing the 2019 plan. The draft plan has generated both heat, yawns, and head-scratching.
Typically, electric utility integrated resource plans have a five-year timeframe. That was the case for TVA’s prior plan. The new plan focuses on both a 10-year (2035) basic plan and 25-year (2050) endpoint. TVA says, “The 2025 IRP is an important tool to shape how TVA provides power to the Valley region through 2050…. The IRP will provide strategic direction for meeting the energy needs of TVA’s customers and residents of the Valley region between now and 2050, establishing a strong planning foundation and informing TVA’s next long-range financial plan.”
The giant federally owned power system says, “Integrated resource planning at TVA is grounded in least-cost principles and meets the environmental review requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Least-cost planning is integral to TVA, and thorough environmental review of the IRP analysis provides valuable insights that are considered as IRP recommendations are developed. TVA applies the following least-cost principles, aligned with Section 113 of the Energy Policy Act of 1992, to develop plans for providing affordable, reliable, resilient, and increasingly cleaner energy over the long term.”
TVA says its planning effort is driven by an expectation for increasing power demand, although both it and most other large electric systems have historically mis-estimated demand growth. The agency says, “After a decade of flat electricity demand, the TVA region is now experiencing increasing demand for electricity driven by population, employment, and industrial growth, weather trends, and increasing electric vehicle use.” Contributing to changing market conditions include volatile winter conditions and natural gas prices and demands from customers for carbon dioxide reductions and renewables increases.
TVA’s current 41,261-MW of generating capacity consists of 42% nuclear, 31% natural gas, 14% coal, 9% hydro, and 4% wind and solar. Adding to TVA’s long-range view are coming retirements of existing generation, “over 10,000 MW of coal, gas, and renewable capacity.” The TVA analysis looks at six scenarios: a reference case, without an Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse gas emissions rule; high demand growth; a stagnant economy; net zero greenhouse gas emissions; net zero CO2 with growth; and the reference case with an EPA CO2 rule.
Examining six different scenarios for the 2025-2035 period, most new generation is in renewables, followed by natural gas, with significant increases in storage capacity. Nuclear makes a cameo appearance. That means that the TVA total mix of generation in 2035 will be built on nuclear and gas in four of the six scenarios, with hydrogen showing up strongly in the two net zero possibilities.
The chief differences between the 2035 projections and the 2050 is a significant increase in storage capacity in the out years. It is difficult to think that the 2050 projections have much value beyond the 2035 scenarios, which themselves are likely not trustworthy.
TVA spokesman Scott Brooks told Nashville TV station WKRN that the best way to view the scenarios is as a “compass,” not a roadmap: “It’s meant to give us a general direction, not to be specific about whether it’s gas versus coal versus nuclear versus renewable energy, all of which by the way, we’re going to have in the mix for quite some time. So really, what the IRP is intended to do is give us a general direction that we should be headed and making sure that we can supply the power that’s necessary over the next couple of decades.”
Maggie Shober of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) said, “What is most notable from a first glance through the document is that there is no proposed near-term action plan that details what exactly TVA plans to do in the next 5-8 years.”
Stephen Smith, SACE executive director, added, “TVA’s Draft IRP has a little bit of everything for everybody, but not much specifically for anyone. We are concerned that TVA’s institutional bias against renewables is still present by failing to model solar and storage as a cost-effective dispatchable resource, while at the same time building future portfolios rich in fossil gas that bet on unproven technologies like burning hydrogen and carbon capture. This IRP is full of long-term speculation, but short on near-term substance.”
–Kennedy Maize
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