All six of President Biden's nominees for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Board of Directors were confirmed by the US Senate on December 21, 2022.
Maggie Shober | December 22, 2022 | Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, UtilitiesOn December 21, by a voice vote, the U.S. Senate approved President Biden’s six nominees to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Board of Directors.
Those nominees are:
- Beth Pritchard Geer
- Robert (Bobby) P. Klein
- L. Michelle Moore
- William J. Renick
- Joe H. Ritch
- Adam Wade White
Three of the nominees (Geer, Klein, and Moore) were first nominated for the Board in April 2021. The other three were nominated in 2022.
The TVA Board regulates TVA, the largest public power entity in the US. Because TVA is a federal entity, it is not regulated by state-level commissions in the same way similarly-sized utilities in neighboring states are. Consequently, the main body that provides oversight of TVA is its Board.
The TVA Board meets quarterly, with the next meeting on February 16, 2023, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. A few weeks before that meeting, the Board’s four committees will meet, but those committee meetings are not open to the public.
The six new TVA Board members will be sworn in, likely sometime in January, in time to participate in upcoming meetings. The six additions bring the TVA Board to full capacity, with three existing Directors remaining on the Board: William Kilbride (current chair), Beth Harwell, and Brian Noland.
Some actions the TVA Board has taken in the past few years include delegating decision-making authority to TVA’s CEO, Jeff Lyash, on how to replace the retiring Cumberland and Kingston coal power plants. Those decisions are being made outside of the typical resource planning process.
The TVA Board is required to approve TVA’s next resource plan, called an Integrated Resource Plan or IRP, in 2024. We have heard that TVA plans to begin its Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) process in late 2023, though an exact date is still unknown. Historically, TVA has taken 18 months to two years to complete a full IRP process that determines the mix of energy TVA will retire, procure, build, and use for the next ten years.
We at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy are looking forward to working with the new board members to bring TVA into better alignment with the Biden Administration’s priorities and goal of decarbonizing the power sector by 2035.