This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina.

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) quarterly meeting in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, opened with a triumphant video homage to its work during Winter Storm Fern. Energy had come through, yet again, to defeat extreme cold. The montage credited this to the utility’s “coal workhorses,” then noted that nuclear provided “uninterrupted power” and “hydro responded instantly.” The list ended there, despite years of promises that the agency would bolster renewables and battery storage. The message was clear: Solar had been unceremoniously dropped from the mix, and coal, which the agency had been phasing out, was back. 

What the video hinted at, the board made official. Its seven members unanimously dropped renewable energy as a priority, ended diversity programs, and granted two of the agency’s four remaining coal plants a reprieve. The decision followed the seating of four members selected by President Trump, breaking months of paralysis that followed the termination of three Biden appointees.

The changes, made during the February 11 board meeting, signal more than a routine policy reset for the nation’s largest public power provider. They will slow the TVA’s shift away from fossil fuels just as electricity demand is spiking, raising questions about future costs, pollution, and the role of federally-owned utilities in the country’s energy transition.

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For years, TVA planners had mapped out a future without coal. That is now on hold. The Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, was scheduled for retirement in 2027, with all nine of its units slated for demolition and replacement with an “energy complex” of gas generation and battery storage. All of them will remain online alongside the gas plant, but renewables are no longer part of the picture. The board also shelved plans to scuttle the Cumberland Fossil Plant in Stewart County, Tennessee, in 2028. 

These moves come despite the agency’s 2025 Integrated Resource Plan, which called for retiring the two facilities because of Kingston’s “high cost and challenged condition” and Cumberland’s “lack of flexibility.” The Kingston coal plant was also the site of a devastating 2010 coal ash disaster, the largest industrial spill in U.S. history.

The board defended its decision by citing energy affordability for the Tennessee Valley. 

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