The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a public corporation owned by the federal government that operates energy generation and distribution throughout Tennessee and in parts of seven different Southeastern states. More than 90 years ago, power lines began to mark Tennessee’s grassy hills, courtesy of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).
Despite its success, TVA has come under fire for its environmental impacts. In 1955, coal overtook hydropower as TVA’s primary source of energy. TVA has not decreased emissions since they began reporting generation by source in mid-2018, and fossil fuels still make up almost half (48%) of generation today. If TVA were a country, it would emit more (per year than Norway (42M Tonnes). TVA has an environmental policy, but it is not on track to meet its decarbonization goals.
In their paper The Gap Filling Role of Private Environmental Governance, Professors Michael Vandenbergh and Jim Rossi of Vanderbilt Law School’s Energy, Environment, and Land Use, along with Vanderbilt alumnus Ian Faucher point to Private Environmental Governance as a means to decarbonize while government regulation stagnates. They point out that polarization has kept all but one major environmental bill from passing through Congress, and that the current composition of the Supreme Court will make Executive action unlikely to stick. Similarly, the seven states in which TVA operates have, in many cases, been resistant toward climate action, even launching lawsuits against efforts to impose climate requirements. Local governments, too, are unlikely to be up to the task to coercing TVA to decarbonize. As major customers, TVA has plenty of motivation to meet their demands, but the disparity between local approaches to mitigation makes this a challenging proposal. Furthermore, cities that demand more renewables may be forced to make a difficult choice since TVA’s estimates do not forecast sufficient volume of renewable generation to meet needs. Therefore, cities may need to choose between finding a new energy partner or compromising on their climate goals.
In the midst of a chaotic public governance ecosystem, private initiatives may be able to keep TVA’s decarbonization closer to a 1.5°C pathway. Please see our primer on The Gap Filling Role, and read the paper to learn more about what those private levers could be.
