The Tennessee Valley Authority is in an unusual spot.
Public opposition has been mounting from diverse sources, ranging from environmentalists and U.S. senators to a country music star. Recent gripes include the utility’s fossil fuel expansion, million-plus-dollar executive salaries, a glacial pace in building new nuclear reactors, unjust burdens of pollution, and a general lack of transparency.
Tensions culminated last week in a cancelled gas project, a threat to fire TVA’s new CEO, and speculations that President Donald Trump may privatize — or seize control of — the nation’s oldest and largest public utility.
“In my 30 years of tracking TVA, I have never seen TVA in such a destabilized position as it is now,” said Stephen Smith, the longtime director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
The Trump administration attempts to oust CEO
Debates about who should hold the top leadership position at TVA began in January. That’s when Jeff Lyash, the former CEO whose salary was criticized by Trump during the president’s first term, announced his intent to retire after about six years.
In March, Tennessee Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty asked for an interim CEO in an editorial for Power Magazine. They suggested that the utility needed fresh leadership to usher in a nuclear renaissance.
“TVA could be to the nuclear race what NASA was to the space race,” the senators wrote.
TVA ignored the request from the senators, internally promoting Don Moul one week later.
But the tables have turned again: Last week, a White House official demanded that the TVA Board of Directors fire Moul or be fired themselves.
The board declined.
The White House, the TVA Board and TVA did not respond to questions about the order to fire Moul. The order was first reported by The Atlantic via anonymous sources.
On Friday, TVA said board staffing had not changed.
‘Absolutely possible that TVA could be privatized’
If Trump installs a board of supporters — and they install a new CEO — then Trump could control TVA, with the option to sell off the utility.
“It is absolutely possible that TVA could be privatized,” Smith said.
TVA could be bought by other monopoly utilities like Duke Energy or NextEra, which have both made similar deals in the past. A group or person invested in artificial intelligence, like Elon Musk, could put in an offer. Or TVA’s 153 local power companies, including the Nashville Electric Service, could collectively buy TVA.
Privatization could be a total takeover. Or TVA could become a blended model of public and private power, such as only opening up TVA’s transmission system while leaving other assets public.
Smith said that model could offer benefits as proposed generation projects would have to compete to join the grid.
Since 2020, TVA has planned nine gas plants and more than 160 miles of pipelines and claimed that solar alternatives were more expensive without showing the math. An open transmission system, similar to the Midcontinent Independent Supply Operator, known as MISO, would likely result in far more renewables in the Tennessee Valley, Smith said.
Environmental groups suggested a total privatization would be a corporate wealth transfer.
“TVA was originally created because the private sector failed rural America,” Daniel Tait, director of Energy Alabama, said in a joint statement with groups like Appalachian Voices, Sierra Club, Third Act Tennessee and Sunrise Movement Nashville. “Turning TVA over to private, for-profit interests would mean higher electricity rates, destruction and loss of access to outdoor recreation areas, and other devastating consequences.”
Full privatization may also negatively affect TVA’s 10,000 employees and the local power companies who purchase power from the utility. On Friday, TVA convened its 153 local power companies for a call, with one report suggesting that Moul addressed the threat of privatization. A TVA spokesperson confirmed the call but did not address whether Moul discussed privatization.
Smith suggested the worst option would be TVA staying in its current form, but with one notable difference: Trump could use the utility as a tool for his “energy dominance” agenda, ensuring that TVA continues to ramp up fossil fuels and begins construction on nuclear reactors across the state. TVA recently became the nation’s first utility to ask federal regulators for a construction permit to build a small modular reactor at its Clinch River site near Oak Ridge.
“I think ultimately it would end up destroying TVA,” Smith said, or at least create a mess while raising costs and causing environmental harm.
More: TVA 2020 v. 2030: Why the nation’s largest public utility is not getting cleaner | WPLN News
Blackburn, who plans to run for governor, did not directly respond to WPLN’s question about whether she supports privatization. She said Trump will “ensure the United States leads the world in next-generation nuclear.” Blackburn and Hagerty issued a statement praising Trump’s TVA Board picks and encouraging swift approval.
Gov. Bill Lee did not respond to a request for comment. Lee wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal last month encouraging Trump to use TVA as a “secret weapon” to rapidly expand nuclear capacity to power artificial intelligence.
A brief history of attempts to privatize TVA
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created TVA.
Shortly after, a group that is now part of the Southern Company, Georgia’s biggest utility, challenged the model in the Supreme Court.
In the late 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower called TVA “creeping socialism” and aroused talks of limiting the utility. He ultimately passed a law ending federal appropriations and gave TVA its current financial structure of relying on electricity sales and a high debt ceiling, while also restricting access to TVA’s transmission system.
TVA rapidly expanded after that decision and has since largely operated like a monopoly corporation. For reference, today, TVA is the largest public utility in the nation. But it’s also probably the fifth largest of any utility in the U.S. by electricity capacity, after Duke, Southern Company, NextEra and Constellation. (Note: Utilities do not always make their generation capacity easily accessible, and it can periodically change due to mergers and spinoffs.)
Over the years, privatization talks surfaced under Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.
During Trump’s first term, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget initiated privatization talks. TVA self-funds its operations through about $12 billion in revenue each year. But TVA and its assets, valued at $58 billion, are owned by the federal government. And TVA’s roughly $20 billion debt also sits on the federal debt. The White suggested addressing this debt by selling off TVA’s transmission assets.
How Trump is taking control
Speculation about Trump setting the stage for privatization started as soon as the president began firing TVA board members this spring.
Trump has now fired three members without citing a cause.
The board is supposed to have nine directors, appointed by presidents and approved by the Senate, but is now down to three — less than the quorum needed to make key decisions, like approving TVA’s annual budget next month.
More: How Biden affected TVA | WPLN News
Trump has nominated five new members. Four of his picks have no energy experience. One is Lee Beaman, a Nashville businessman and conservative donor who has weathered multiple public controversies. After some public criticism of the potential board’s lack of energy experience, Trump nominated Arthur Graham, a Florida public service commissioner, on Thursday.
Graham is the only person of color nominated by Trump and the only person with energy experience. All other picks are white men, as are the three remaining board members.
An idea being floated is that Trump could bypass the Senate to fill the board as early as next month. The Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, which is the group that first approves nominations to the TVA Board before the full Senate, did not respond to a question about whether this is possible.
Trump boosts fossil fuel, nuclear interests
The Trump administration is removing hurdles for nuclear and fossil fuel energy, reducing regulatory authority at agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and ending or phasing out tax credits for clean energy, electric vehicles and energy-efficient appliances, which is forecasted to raise the price of electricity.
Smith said TVA’s recent decisions have been correspondingly hyper political and hyper partisan — not reflective of concerns for the economy or the environment.
More: TVA’s possible coal extensions unravel rationale given for new gas | WPLN News
The Trump administration has also eliminated tools to track climate and weather disasters, fired federal scientists, effectively ended a Congress-required climate report and erased the current version, and purged the words “climate crisis” from federal websites.
Global temperatures continue to rise as the world burns fuels, slashes forests and relies on animal agriculture. The number of hot temperature records since 1950 exceed what would be expected in a million years without human-caused climate change.
Despite the scientific consensus and even an executive order from former President Joe Biden, TVA has been increasing its reliance on fossil fuels, with plans to boost its gas capacity by 60% over the past four years.
TVA cancels gas plant near Nashville
Two years ago, TVA announced plans for a gas plant and 30-mile pipeline in Ashland City, a rural town just outside Nashville in Cheatham County.
Residents have fiercely opposed the project, packing TVA meetings and organizing resistance. Some residents have also faced litigation: TVA sued multiple landowners for survey access to potentially build new transmission lines.
The utility didn’t budge. But then country music star John Rich stepped in.
It started in May. Rich posted an interview with resident George Wade on social media. He asked Wade what he would say to Trump, emphasizing that the president controls the board.
“TVA has its foot on the throats of the Cheatham County residents. They are pillaging, terrorizing, and destroying this community,” Wade said.
On Tuesday, TVA announced that it would be dropping the project.
That does not mean the utility had a change of heart with fossil fuels. TVA has planned eight other gas plants since 2020, with a total capacity of 6 gigawatts, and a TVA spokesperson said they will keep building gas. TVA, which has a total of about 32 GW of owned generation capacity, also has 4 GW of unannounced gas projects on its transmission queue.
Tracy O’Neill, another Ashland City resident who lives near the proposed project, was told to sit down before getting the news.
“It took a few seconds for that to register in my mind, and then I just erupted in tears,” O’Neill said.
But she remains wary of what’s to come — and understands that this is about more than one plant.
“I feel that this entire debacle exposed some real serious flaws in how TVA engages with the public,” she said. “It shouldn’t take a celebrity tweet to get the attention of a federal agency.”
