By Kennedy Maize
Coerced, cowed, and reconfigured by President Trump, the federal government’s Tennessee Valley Authority has issued a “final draft” 2026 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) that targets coal, nuclear, and gas — its resource mix for much of the past — for its old, new future.
The giant public power system, the largest in the U.S., last approved an integrated plan for the future in 2019, attempting to scope out a path for the next five years. In September of 2024, TVA came up with an novel, ambitious draft IRP, aimed at some 25 years in the future. That plan never got approved, a result of Trump’s destruction of a board quorum.
Most utility IRPs try to look only five years ahead, as the road ahead becomes less clear the further away it is. At that point, which is still the case, TVA’s 41,261-MW of generating capacity consisted of 42% nuclear, 31% natural gas, 14% coal, 9% hydro, and 4% solar and wind combined. Looking into the near future, TVA anticipated closing significant aged coal generation, adding most new generation from renewables.
Since then, the agency says, times and markets have changed, calling for a new look at its 2024 long range forecast. The new draft plan notes, “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 electrification. Industrial forecasts are being driven in part by growth in high-energy users like data centers and electrification of processes.”
What has changed, particularly since Jan. 20, 2025, is the direction of its owner, the U.S. government, and the plans, notions, and whims of its current leader, Donald Trump. The White House moved quickly to take control of TVA when Trump moved back to D.C. last year.
On March 27, 2025 Trump fired Michelle Moore from the board of directors of the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority. On April 1, he followed up by firing board chairman Joe Rich, leaving the already-depleted nine-member TVA board with only four members, lacking a quorum. In July last year, the White House continued its political house cleaning, firing the three remaining Biden appointees and naming four new board members, including one vacant position.
The Trump firings came as TVA’s long-serving CEO Jeff Lyash retired in April 2025. He had announced his pending retirement days after Trump’s inauguration. Trump had announced in his first administration that he intended to can Lyash, but never got around to it. Lyash’s deputy, TVA veteran Don Moul, immediately replaced him. Moul announced this April that he would step down, after the shortest tenure of a TVA CEO ever. Moul has been succeeded by another TVA insider, Mike Skaggs, with more than 25 years at the agency.
Trump’s conquest of TVA was complete, and it is reflected in the revised IRP. The new plan explicitly reflects the impact of the Trump administration and its roll backs of previous environmental and energy regulations and policies, along with new legal authorities. The draft states, “Throughout 2025 and continuing in 2026, the utility industry experienced significant policy and regulatory shifts.”
In explaining its IRP U-turn, TVA cites Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025 energy emergency executive order E.O 14156 ; Environmental Protection Agency “regulatory relief affecting existing coal and future natural-gas generation, including less stringent coal ash disposal rules”; and Trump’s “One Big Beautify Bill Act,” which removes or reduces incentives for renewable generation.
All that together leads TVA to plot of future that consists of:
- No closures of existing coal-fired generation. As a practical matter, that means reversing course on the planned retirement of TVA’s largest generating station, the Cumberland coal plant, commissioned in 1973, with two identical units totaling 2,470-MW. TVA had planned to retire one unit this year and the second in 2028. TVA says it expects all of its coal-fired capacity to be scrapped by 2040.
- Adding up to 5-GW of nuclear capacity, through “investing in the existing nuclear fleet and cost-effective opportunities to increase output; potential for advanced nuclear deployment.”
- Adding “4 to 13 GW” of natural gas combined cycle generation and “4 to 13 GW” in gas combustion turbines.
- Adding “2 to 5 GW” of solar, less than a GW of wind, and “1 to 5 GW” of pumped hydro and battery storage.
- Up to a GW of energy efficiency gains and up to 2 GW of demand response.
TVA says it will present its final draft IRP and an accompanying environmental impact statement to the TVA board in August. The board has a meeting scheduled for Aug. 20 in Memphis.
It’s unlikely that the plan will produce any opposition from the Trump-dominated board. It’s also unlikely that the plan’s vision far into the future will look much like things really look in TVA-land in 2050. Predicting even five years ahead is fraught with difficulties. Note that its pre-Trump 2024 IRP turned out to be a deal letter after Jan. 20, 2025.
At a practical level, the current draft IRP is not really a planning document. It is a political product, an “Instantaneous Response to Politics” IRP.
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