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NASHVILLE — Nearly 4,000 Tennesseans criticized the Tennessee Valley Authority’s energy plan as short-sighted and over reliant on gas.
The Sierra Club submitted 3,669 comments on behalf of its supporters as well as its own technical comments on TVA’s 2026 preliminary Integrated Resource Plan, the federal utility’s long-term energy plan that maps out how it plans to provide reliable energy for its ten million customers over the coming decades.
TVA’s IRP significantly overrelies on a massive gas buildout and continued operation of aging, inefficient and costly coal plants. While the gas forecast is overblown, TVA’s plans for renewables have shrunk dramatically from its 2025 IRP. This unbalanced forecast not only artificially favors gas power, but it leaves customers on the hook for risky gas price changes. The rest of the nation understands this–utility companies across the South are investing meaningfully in new solar projects, but not TVA.
