TVA energy plan faulted as backward-looking

TVA energy plan faulted
as backward-looking

By Tom Charlier
The Commercial Appeal

A plan that TVA describes as a vision for the future was derided by critics Tuesday night as a backward look at failures of the past.

Tennessee Valley Authority officials were in Memphis for the eighth of nine planned public hearings on a draft agency plan outlining energy strategies for the next 25 years. They heard from more than 15 speakers, whose comments will be reviewed as TVA completes the final document later this year.

The plan, called Energy Vision 2020, recommends a move toward new combustion-turbine technology to make coal-fired plants more efficient, modernizing hydroelectric facilities, converting an unfinished nuclear plant in Alabama to another fuel source, and buying options to purchase power from other suppliers at a set price.

But speakers at the hearing on the University of Memphis campus said the plan seemed to spell out business as usual for an agency under fire for a $26 billion debt and a troubled nuclear power program. They called it weak on conservation and renewable energy options and said it keeps TVA headed down a path toward fiscal and environmental ruin.

"You don't have any vision anymore, contrary to the name of this draft . . . ," said Stephen A. Smith, executive director of the Tennessee Valley Energy Reform Coalition.

"This is really, you know, looking 20-20 at the past, bringing on archaic technologies and continuing to focus on an old mindset that isn't true to the 21st Century."

Smith and other speakers also took TVA to task for its efforts to bring on line a reactor at the controversial Watts Bar nuclear plant near Spring City, Tenn. He said the nuclear program and the associated debt have reversed TVA's historic role as a benefactor to the residents of the region.

"It was a positive force in the valley when it was first created, and unfortunately TVA now has become more of an economic drain," said Smith, who served on the group reviewing the agency planning process.

Robert A. Schreiber, a Memphian who has been active with a number of environmental and energy groups, said that with the draft plan TVA missed a unique opportunity to forge a role for itself as a leader in the development of new, less-damaging energy generation. He said the draft shows that the agency remains a "self-serving, nonresponsive, uncontrollable, archaic institution."

Memphis architect Clark A. Buchner III, speaking for the Volunteer Group of the Sierra Club, criticized the report as "overly dependent on non-renewable sources of energy."

The strategic energy planning is required under the Energy Policy Act of 1992. TVA will be accepting written comments on the draft through Oct. 15.