This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina.
The Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) quarterly meeting in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, opened with a triumphant video homage to its work during Winter Storm Fern. Energy had come through, yet again, to defeat extreme cold. The montage credited this to the utility’s “coal workhorses,” then noted that nuclear provided “uninterrupted power” and “hydro responded instantly.” The list ended there, despite years of promises that the agency would bolster renewables and battery storage. The message was clear: Solar had been unceremoniously dropped from the mix, and coal, which the agency had been phasing out, was back.
What the video hinted at, the board made official. Its seven members unanimously dropped renewable energy as a priority, ended diversity programs, and granted two of the agency’s four remaining coal plants a reprieve. The decision followed the seating of four members selected by President Trump, breaking months of paralysis that followed the termination of three Biden appointees.
The changes, made during the February 11 board meeting, signal more than a routine policy reset for the nation’s largest public power provider. They will slow the TVA’s shift away from fossil fuels just as electricity demand is spiking, raising questions about future costs, pollution, and the role of federally-owned utilities in the country’s energy transition.
For years, TVA planners had mapped out a future without coal. That is now on hold. The Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, was scheduled for retirement in 2027, with all nine of its units slated for demolition and replacement with an “energy complex” of gas generation and battery storage. All of them will remain online alongside the gas plant, but renewables are no longer part of the picture. The board also shelved plans to scuttle the Cumberland Fossil Plant in Stewart County, Tennessee, in 2028.
These moves come despite the agency’s 2025 Integrated Resource Plan, which called for retiring the two facilities because of Kingston’s “high cost and challenged condition” and Cumberland’s “lack of flexibility.” The Kingston coal plant was also the site of a devastating 2010 coal ash disaster, the largest industrial spill in U.S. history.
The board defended its decision by citing energy affordability for the Tennessee Valley.
“As power demand grows, TVA is looking at every option to bolster our generating fleet to continue providing affordable, reliable electricity to our 10 million customers, create jobs, and help communities thrive,” agency spokesperson Scott Brooks said in a statement.
Left unsaid was the fact that a coal-fired power generation unit at the Cumberland Fossil Plant failed during last month’s storm.
Much of TVA’s load growth comes from the rise of artificial intelligence, said CEO Don Moul, and data centers account for 18% of its industrial load. During the same meeting, the board allowed the company xAI, owned by Elon Musk, to double the amount of power it draws from the grid.
For former board member Michelle Moore, one of the Biden-era appointees President Trump fired in March, the shift aligns squarely with the administration’s priorities. It also signals, she said, that the utility is no longer fulfilling its mission to provide affordable power, economic development, and environmental stewardship across the seven-state Tennessee Valley. “The politics in Washington may change,” she said. “But the TVA’s mission does not.”
That independence has at times put the Tennessee Valley Authority at odds with presidents of both parties. The utility resisted Trump administration pressure to keep coal plants open, continuing to retire facilities based on economic reasons. But it also fell short of President Biden’s decarbonization goals.
Moore worries ordinary ratepayers are no longer an active part of TVA’s decision-making. Typically, a shift as monumental as turning away from renewable energy would have been subject to a lengthy review with input from communities throughout the region, something that simply will not occur now. “This is one more indicator that the public power model is being eroded and is at risk,” Moore said.
Last month, the TVA said it would streamline how it reviews the ecological impacts of its projects, allowing some to move ahead with far less, if any, scrutiny. The move follows a broader rollback of the National Environmental Policy Act under President Trump that grants greater discretion over such considerations to entities like the TVA. For nearly 60 years, the law required an assessment of the environmental impacts of federal projects. “Over the past several years, the TVA board has faced pressure to make decisions based on stringent environmental regulations,” said board member Wade White.
The TVA’s willingness to join the Trump administration’s push to revive the coal industry has rankled locals and environmentalists. In the first year of his second term, President Trump lifted Environmental Protection Agency restrictions on the industry, used emergency executive orders to keep aging coal plants open, expanded mining, and ordered the Pentagon to buy electricity from power plants that use coal. The president has since received an award from industry executives dubbing him the “Undisputed Champion of Clean, Beautiful Coal.”
From a public health standpoint, it’s a nightmare. “Coal is one of the worst things you can imagine for the environment,” said Avner Vengosh, a professor of environmental quality at Duke University who leads a coal and coal ash research group. Mining destroys ecosystems and poisons groundwater, polluting rivers and streams with sulfuric acid. Burning the fossil fuel releases fine particulate matter, impacting the health of nearby residents. A 2023 study in the journal Science found that coal plants caused nearly half a million excess deaths between 1999 and 2020, and a Sierra Club report notes that TVA coal-fired plants were the nation’s deadliest.
“People are upset, they feel like we’re going backwards,” said Amy Kelly, a Sierra Club campaign manager. “The fact that these plants are from the ’50s and ’60s, and we’re just going to prop them up with Band-Aid solutions to appease the current administration is going to cost people.”
Even some coal plant operators agree. A Colorado utility is suing to close a facility, calling a federal emergency order to keep it online “unconstitutional.” For those who live near the two plants the TVA just saved, the decision is, in Joe Schiller’s words, “a betrayal.” Schiller, a retired college professor, has lived near the Cumberland plant for 30 years. “It contradicts everything they’ve told us about the plants in the past,” he said. Even so, he added, it’s a beautiful area. Moments before, his wife had called him outside to admire the sandhill cranes flying by.
“It’s not like you look around every day and say, ‘Yep, that Cumberland plant is slowly killing me,’” Schiller said with a laugh. “Although it probably is.”