Media Contact: Elena Hale | [email protected] | 865-329-0553
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council (TAEBC) has formally submitted comments to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) regarding its 2025 Draft Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). TVA’s IRP serves as a compass for how to best meet forecasted energy demand in the Tennessee Valley region in the coming decades.
“As an advocate for advanced energy as a catalyst for job creation and economic growth, TAEBC recognizes the critical role the IRP plays in shaping Tennessee’s energy landscape and its economic future,” said Cortney Piper, Executive Director of TAEBC. “TAEBC commends TVA’s commitment to decarbonization, advanced energy technologies, and grid modernization and is pleased to provide recommendations to enhance the IRP’s alignment with Tennessee’s growing advanced energy sector, which currently generates $55.9 billion in state GDP, employs over 420,000 Tennesseans, and includes more than 22,000 businesses.”
TAEBC also serves as a member of TVA’s IRP Working Group, a diverse group of stakeholders that meets regularly to provide comprehensive feedback on the IRP.
Overall, the business council emphasized in its comments the need for a balanced approach that prioritizes commercially-ready technologies like solar, wind, and battery storage while fostering innovation in advanced nuclear, carbon capture and hydrogen technologies. TAEBC also touched on modeling transparency, acceleration of renewable energy deployment, expanding storage, and grid modernization.
Most notably, TAEBC’s comments include recommendations for TVA to prioritize public-private partnerships, not only to meet its decarbonization goals but also meet growing needs for energy across the Valley, particularly the demand for carbon-free energy by the private sector, while minimizing impacts to TVA’s debt burden.
“TAEBC encourages TVA to consider how to better integrate large corporate customer demand for carbon-free energy with its IRP,” added Piper. “TVA’s draft IRP views industry electrification mainly through a regulatory lens – that is to say, electrification would not happen if not for regulation, and that is simply not the case. The IRP should align more closely with customer-driven targets like the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). Many utilities view corporate demand for advanced energy as siloed off from their resource planning processes, creating missed opportunities to align this market demand towards the highest value system resources.”
TAEBC fully supports TVA’s investment in emerging technologies such as hydrogen, carbon capture, and small modular reactors (SMRs), and recommends TVA pursue strategic public-private partnerships to accelerate the deployment of these technologies. For example, TAEBC notes in its comments that a sizable private-equity/industrial partnership opportunity exists to alleviate TVA’s debt burden and allow for additional emerging technology asset deployment with shared cost/benefit.
The organization’s full comments can be found here.
About Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council
TAEBC champions advanced energy as an economic development and job creation strategy. Advanced energy is technology neutral and includes electricity and transportation. Anything that makes energy cleaner, safer, more secure or more efficient is in the tent. No other entity in the state concentrates specifically on this robust sector. We educate public officials and business leaders about Tennessee’s advanced energy economy, establish strategic partnerships to connect assets with opportunities, and inform policy that expands and strengthens the industry. TAEBC hosts the Energizing Tennessee podcast, which explores the latest news and insights about the advanced energy sector. For more information, visit https://tnadvancedenergy.com.