Description: Challenge to the Tennessee Valley Authority's decision to replace a coal-fired power plant that it was retiring with a combined-cycle gas plant.
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Appalachian Voices v. Tennessee Valley Authority
Case Documents:
Filing Date Type File Action Taken Summary 06/14/2023 Complaint Download Complaint filed. Groups Challenged TVA Environmental Review for New Gas-Fired Power Plant. Three environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in the federal district court for the Middle District of Tennessee alleging that the TVA violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it decided to replace a coal-fired power plant that it was retiring with a combined-cycle gas plant. The groups alleged that the TVA failed to evaluate “the climate-warming impacts of the Plant’s emissions, the viability of carbon-free alternatives, and the cost of mitigating emissions in compliance with the climate objectives of the United States to decarbonize the power sector.” In addition, the groups alleged that the TVA refused to calculate how the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) would affect the costs of carbon-free alternatives. They also alleged that rolling blackouts that occurred as a result of a winter storm in December 2022 undermined the final environmental impact statement’s (final EIS’s) “assumption that gas plants would provide firm, reliable power in a way that carbon-free alternatives could not.” The NEPA violations asserted by the groups included failure to consider the plant’s climate consequences; failure to take a hard look at the impacts of a connected action (a gas pipeline to supply fuel); failure to objectively consider reasonable carbon-free energy alternatives, such as a solar and battery-storage option that the TVA dismissed based on transmission issues; and failure to rely on accurate economic assumptions to compare alternatives, including by excluding costs of carbon-capture technology and hydrogen conversion for the selected gas plant alternative, excluding social costs of greenhouse gases from its total system costs for the gas plant, and failing to consider economic incentives available under the IRA. The groups also contended that the TVA should have supplemented the final EIS to consider significant new circumstances and information regarding the unreliability of the existing fossil fuel-fired plant, the risks of extreme winter weather on gas supply and gas-fired power plants, and the resiliency of demand response, energy storage, solar, and wind, as demonstrated during the 2022 winter storm.