TVA has unveiled Resilience 360°, a program wrapped in buzzwords about “reliability” and “partnership.” But peel back the petroleum-based mask, and the disguise falls apart. This isn’t as much a resilience plan as a fossil fuel cosplay. It’s all surface-level branding while underneath it’s the same old fossil-fired business model that’s been dragging the Valley backward for decades.
What Resilience 360° Really Means
TVA pitches Resilience 360° as a way to “enhance grid reliability.” In reality, it incentivizes large industrial and direct-served customers to install up to 25 megawatts of on-site power supply equipment, which can be either methane gas turbines or battery energy storage systems (BESS). TVA reserves the right to call on these assets during peak demand or system emergencies, which could provide system-wide support.
The glaring problem with this program is its potential to quietly build out dozens, or even hundreds, of large fossil units scattered across the Valley, which will not be subject to the same regulations that utilities are in our region. One turbine may seem minor, but collectively they could form a shadow fossil fleet with scant public oversight. This poses a massive threat of increased local air pollution, and the potential for impacts to compound in the very neighborhoods that already carry the heaviest environmental burdens.
Another major problem comes from TVA’s apparent stance that methane gas turbines and battery storage are comparable and equally beneficial options. TVA’s own program documents frame methane (“natural”) gas as an “environmentally beneficial, carbon-reduction option.” In fact, a 25 MW BESS could deliver the same firm, dispatchable power as a methane gas turbine, but without the emissions, fuel volatility, or supply risks. Furthermore, batteries charge from the grid (or even better from solar) and can respond within milliseconds during emergencies. Methane gas turbines, on the other hand, perpetuate combustion pollution, release carbon, and undercut TVA’s own decarbonization goals. “Natural” gas isn’t a bridge to a cleaner future. It’s a detour. Calling “natural” gas a carbon-reduction strategy is like trading cigarettes for cigars and calling it a health plan.
These problems are compounded when the timeline of these two types of infrastructure is considered. Companies that choose to participate in this program using gas turbines would be building yet more fossil gas infrastructure in a system already saturated with gas generation, with TVA currently constructing multiple new, large gas power plants. Every new turbine locks in decades of carbon and methane emissions, all while competing with proven, zero-emission options like battery storage powered by solar.
Who really benefits?
TVA stands at the ready to subsidize polluting methane gas turbines at the sites of its largest industrial users, while at the same time flatly denying opportunities to ordinary households to bolster their own energy reliability. Families who want energy independence through rooftop solar and battery storage are blocked by TVA’s refusal to adopt fair compensation programs across its service territory and held back by TVA’s arbitrary limits on local power generation. This double standard is impossible to ignore: enhancing reliability for industry — roadblocks for everyone else, while ordinary ratepayers are left with higher energy burdens, more pollution, and fewer options when the next storm hits.
When these TVA-subsidized industrial gas generators run, the public won’t be guaranteed clean power. What we are guaranteed is more localized pollution, more fossil fuel lock-in, and a regulatory loophole that could allow TVA to skirt environmental safeguards. By incentivizing a new wave of gas turbines through Resilience 360°, TVA is entrenching new fossil dependence at the exact moment it should be incentivizing clean, distributed solutions.
What Could Have Been
The Resilience 360° program could have been a national model for modern energy resilience — a chance for TVA to lead the Valley toward a cleaner, smarter, and fairer energy future. Instead, it’s a missed opportunity. We need TVA (and all utilities) to develop creative, forward-looking solutions that strengthen grid reliability while accelerating the clean energy transition.
The rapid boom in the construction of AI data centers and cryptocurrency operations requires vast amounts of electricity. These facilities can consume electricity at the scale of small cities, forcing utilities, transmission, and distribution operators in our region into unfamiliar territory as they race to build high-capacity connections, a guaranteed power supply, and meet the demands of high-intensity clients. And, in combination with climate-driven extreme weather, they are reshaping our power landscape, exacerbating the “energy crisis.” Meeting this moment demands innovation: programs that manage electric loads more intelligently during periods of peak demand while bringing more clean, renewable energy and energy storage capacity online. TVA, however, is responding to the crisis and skyrocketing demand, not by embracing clean, distributed solutions that benefit everyone, but instead by bending over backward to serve high-intensity data operations.
Missing out on solar solutions
Indeed, some of the biggest energy-consuming facilities served by TVA participate in demand response programs, meaning they can curtail or shift load during periods of exceptionally high grid demand, helping stabilize the grid. Google has signed a demand response program agreement with TVA. These are steps in the right direction, but they don’t excuse TVA’s heavy bias toward gas-fired generation in the Resilience 360° program. TVA justifies the fossil-heavy focus of Resilience 360° by claiming solar can’t handle emergencies, saying, “Solar generation is dependent on sunlight, which is often limited during extreme weather events.” This argument falls apart under basic facts. Indeed, solar alone won’t cover everything, especially during winter morning peaks when the sun is low, or during extended weather events, but that’s precisely where battery storage changes the equation. Batteries store energy when the sun is shining and dispatch it when demand spikes, including the coldest hours before dawn or multi-day outages. Pairing solar with storage can provide the firm, dispatchable power that businesses, households, and communities need — without emissions or fuel price shocks. That’s exactly what Florida Power & Light (FPL), an electric utility similar in size to TVA, is doing as it plans to build out 90,000 MW of solar and 50,000 MW of storage by 2045.
Tennessee averages much more sunshine than other states already making solar work at scale. And yet, despite our abundant sunshine, TVA still lags far behind peer utilities. According to SACE’s Solar in the Southeast: Eighth Edition (2025), Florida Power & Light — a utility company about the same size as TVA — already had more than 13,800 MW of installed solar capacity in 2024 and is projected to exceed 30,000 MW by 2030. TVA, by comparison, added less than 300 MW per year on average and remains way off pace to meet even its own 10,000 MW by 2035 goal. If Florida can rapidly scale clean energy while managing hurricane risks, then Tennessee — with its abundant sunshine and stable grid — has no excuse for clinging to gas.
Solar is More Reliable than Gas, Even (Especially) During Extreme Weather
TVA is already adding thousands of megawatts of new methane gas power capacity under the banner of “reliability,” yet gas has proven vulnerable in both heat and cold, while battery energy storage systems can deliver the same reliable power whether charged by sunshine or gas turbines. Solar-charged batteries have zero emissions, zero fuel price volatility, and zero risk of pipeline failures. By pretending solar can’t deliver, TVA is locking in more harmful fossil fuel infrastructure instead of building a cleaner, more resilient grid.
When it comes to extreme weather, real-world evidence undermines TVA’s talking point that gas is reliable while renewables are not. Across the country, states have shown how battery storage transforms solar into a true reliability asset. During Winter Storm Uri in 2021, major elements of Texas’ gas infrastructure froze solid. Pipelines and wells shut down, and fuel shortages triggered catastrophic blackouts. Methane gas didn’t save the grid — it helped crash it. In contrast, distributed solar and battery systems kept producing through the storm in many areas, powering homes, businesses, and critical facilities when centralized fossil generation failed. Now, Texas has expanded its storage fleet to over 15,000 MW, providing stability during the latest round of scorching heatwaves and Winter Storm Heather, saving Texans an estimated $750 million.
When Winter Storm Elliott hit in 2022, Tennessee Valley residents experienced something unprecedented: rolling blackouts ordered by TVA. For the first time in the agency’s history, the nation’s largest public power provider went dark because TVA’s gas and coal plants couldn’t handle the cold. By 9:00 am on December 23, TVA had lost 6,705 MW of generation from coal, combined-cycle gas, and independent power producers. But not everyone went dark. In Bolivar, TN, solar installations kept the lights on. Bolivar Energy was able to power over 300 homes from a local solar farm during the rolling blackouts. In Chattanooga, the local power company, EPB, kept the lights on for the first night of the rolling blackouts because of the large batteries it installed on the grid. Just this October, EPB announced that it had completely prevented a blackout for 400 customers by using a battery system during an unplanned incident. These examples are just tiny slivers of the potential resilience benefits that solar and battery storage can bring to Tennesseans if TVA tries in earnest to harness them.
Hurricane Helene made the same point. In its aftermath, communities across the Southeast were left in the dark for days. But solar-plus-battery microgrids kept the lights on in key facilities, powering shelters, community centers, and critical services in some of the hardest-hit and most vulnerable areas. As Canary Media reported, these microgrids became lifelines, operating independently of the main grid and speeding recovery when centralized infrastructure was crippled.
Meanwhile, gas is more vulnerable than solar during extreme events. The performance of methane gas power generators during extreme weather events exposes the weakness of TVA’s fossil-heavy approach. A joint investigation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and National Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) found that 63% of the electric capacity lost during Winter Storm Elliott came from gas, while only 1% of the capacity that went offline was from solar.
If TVA were serious about resilience, it would recognize these risks and use Resilience 360° as a customer-sited equipment program to deploy proven distributed solar and storage that keeps running when gas infrastructure doesn’t. TVA says it will “evaluate renewable and emerging technologies for potential inclusion in later phases,” but once gas turbines are built, they’re politically and financially harder to replace.
What Could Be
TVA is the nation’s largest public power provider — a distinction that should mean more than its size. “Public power” should mean lowering costs for working families, investing in clean energy that strengthens community resilience, and ensuring that every Valley resident benefits from the grid they help pay for.
Instead, through Resilience 360°, TVA flips that mission on its head. It prioritizes industrial customers over the public, doubles down on generation sources that have already failed in extreme weather, and leaves households without real tools to weather the next crisis.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way. The framework behind Resilience 360° could be reimagined into something genuinely transformative. One that puts communities, not just corporations, at the center of resilience. A stronger, fairer version of this program would:
- Invest even more in energy efficiency programs to reduce peak loads, so the grid isn’t pushed to the breaking point when extreme weather hits, and our homes and buildings can better endure extreme weather events
- Create, improve, and scale innovative and accessible demand-response programs that reward customers — residential, commercial, and industrial — for shifting or reducing use when the grid is under stress, and ensure nonessential large electric loads get reduced before regular people at home have their lights go out.
- Support widespread solar-plus-battery installations at residential, commercial, and industrial locations, as supportive distribution grid infrastructure.
- Support community-based microgrids powered by solar and battery storage, keeping hospitals, shelters, and emergency services running when centralized systems fail.
- Build resilience hubs across the Valley — places where residents can access power, refrigeration, and communications during outages.
- Begin tapping the immense energy potential of EV batteries with a managed charging program.
- Encourage distributed renewables, including agrivoltaics, to preserve farmland while generating clean, local, reliable energy.
- Increase transmission connections within the region and to other regions so that the grid can be bigger than the storm, and non-affected regions can better provide energy to storm-stricken areas.
This is what public power could look like in practice — a shared investment in clean, local, people-powered resilience.
Utility programs that encourage private investment in a more reliable grid are generally a good idea, but TVA misses the mark with this program by promoting large pollution sources and giving large, powerful business interests yet another break while denying similar benefits for the rest of us. This program is not for community resilience hubs. It’s not for hospitals, schools, or neighborhoods. The installations from this program will be installed behind industrial fences and are designed first and foremost to help corporations’ bottom lines. Sure, technically, these gas generators could help keep the lights on for everyone on the grid during a peak-demand event, but where is TVA’s program to help regular residents install batteries and on-site generation so that our interests can come first when threatened with a blackout?
The Tennessee Valley doesn’t need another costume change for the same outdated energy playbook. It needs leadership willing to take off the mask and deliver on TVA’s original promise: to serve the people of this region with innovation, accountability, and light that truly belongs to everyone.
