TVA not interested in taking on clean-coal facility

“If we can come up with a clean-coal solution, that would be great,” said Jack Bailey, TVA’s vice president of power resource planning. “But it’s got a long way to go, and we have other needs for the money right now than to spend it on FutureGen.”

FutureGen is President Bush’s plan to build a 275-megawatt prototype power plant that would use clean-coal technology to generate electricity and provide a new source of clean-burning hydrogen that the Bush administration hopes would be a cost-effective replacement for gasoline.

The $1 billion FutureGen program remains a “research and development project at this stage,” Bailey told The Chattanooga Times News Free Press, and it would require private partners to fund about $250 million, or 26 percent, of the cost.

TVA, the nation’s largest public utility serving 8.3 million consumers in seven states, has other priorities, he said.

TVA is spending $5.6 billion to upgrade its 11 aging coal-fired power plants and faces the prospect of an additional $3 billion in costs to meet proposed clean air standards

Meanwhile, TVA is spending $1.8 billion to restart a reactor at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in north Alabama, limiting how much it has available for new ventures, Bailey said.

Stephen Smith of the Knoxville-based Southern Alliance for Clean Energy said TVA should be involved in the FutureGen project given its current contribution to air quality problems in the Tennessee Valley.

“I think it is unfortunate that TVA, which gets 55 to 60 percent of their power from coal, is not interested,” Smith said.

The FutureGen project is supported by a consortium of nine of the nation’s largest coal companies and electric utilities, including Atlanta-based Southern Co. The consortium is being coordinated by Battelle, a nonprofit research and development institution.

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., suggested in a House subcommittee meeting last week that TVA’s $4.1 billion unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in Alabama might be a good site for the FutureGen plant.

Energy Undersecretary Robert Card said certain aspects of Bellefonte, such as its existing electrical switching system, would prove attractive. But he said Energy Department officials “haven’t yet determined how the siting will occur for FutureGen.”

TVA provides electricity through 158 distributors to Tennessee and parts of Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.
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