Guide for emailing the TVA Board of Directors on the Kingston Plant Replacement

Email for the TVA Board of Directors:

Email subject line suggestions:

• Please take a harder look at Kingston
• We don’t want a gas plant or pipeline at Kingston
• We need clean energy at Kingston
• We need affordable energy at Kingston
• Gas is not the cheapest option for Kingston
• The public deserves to know the true costs of gas at Kingston

Talking points:

• It’s extremely disappointing that the TVA board gave decision-making power on Kingston back to CEO Jeff Lyash without the public’s knowledge.
• The TVA Board of Directors has the power to direct staff to take a harder look at power source alternatives at Kingston.
• Working people deserve affordable power, clean air and water, and good jobs made possible by local clean energy economies, not gas.
• Gas will end up costing ratepayers $1 billion more than clean energy alternatives at Kingston.
• Please stop the Kingston gas project from moving forward and issue a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that corrects “serious deficiencies” in TVA’s final study on Kingston.
• Find other talking points in the “Things to know” section below.

Background:

TVA is retiring the coal-powered Kingston Fossil Plant, once the largest coal plant in the world. The Environmental Protection Agency called out “serious deficiencies” in TVA’s study for how to replace the plant, and advised them to produce another analysis that shows the public the real financial and environmental costs.

Things to know:

GAS CAN RAISE ELECTRICITY BILLS

• A third party analysis recently found that TVA can save ratepayers $1.3 billion dollars by selecting the utility’s solar and battery storage replacement option instead of gas. TVA also admits that methane gas prices were the main cause of skyrocketing electricity bills across its service area in summer 2022.
• TVA CEO Jeff Lyash, who made the Kingston decision, was compensated $10.5 million in 2023 — making him the highest-paid federal employee in the country.

• TVA estimates the gas plant would emit about 1.7 million tons of air pollutants each year, including carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, methane, nitrous oxides and more. In comparison, the solar and storage option that TVA is considering as a plant replacement would release zero air emissions.

• A proposed gas pipeline, Enbridge’s Ridgeline pipeline, would supply the new power plant with gas. Pipeline construction would involve over 400 water crossings, including tributaries of the Obed River, a National Wild and Scenic River.
• Currently, Enbridge plans to cross the Emory River at a site that is federally listed as critical habitat for the threatened spotfin chub, a beautiful fish also known as the turquoise shiner, and is proposed as critical habitat for the threatened sickle darter. Enbridge identified over thirty different threatened and endangered species that could be affected by the project.

• TVA wants to build the gas plant in the same community where it caused the largest industrial spill in U.S. history — the 2008 Kingston Coal Ash Spill. Cleanup workers were denied personal protective equipment by TVA’s contractor for the cleanup. Since then, hundreds of workers have come forward with illnesses, and more than 60 cleanup workers have died. An affected neighborhood in Harriman, Tenn. was also replaced with a park.
• Julie Bledsoe, wife of cleanup worker Ron Bledsoe, says TVA owes us transparency and calls for a clean energy replacement for the Kingston plant.

• TVA's planned gas buildout by 2030 is the largest of all electric utilities in the U.S, with eight methane gas plants and three pipelines proposed, planned, or built in the last three years. The proposed 1,500-plus MW gas replacement for Kingston is part of this massive investment in fossil fuel infrastructure. Right now, TVA's energy mix is only 4% wind and solar.