TVA urged to consider gas to replace old coal

The Tennessee Valley Authority could cut both its costs and pollution by replacing its oldest coal plants with gas-fired power purchased from other companies, an independent power producer told a TVA study group Monday.

Michael A. Chapman, president of Magnolia Energy LP, said his company’s combined-cycle, natural gas plant in Mississippi is one of at least four such plants in the region that are now underutilized and could provide TVA cleaner power than that generated by some of TVA’s coal-fired plants.

“TVA has an opportunity to reduce costs and dramatically improve its environmental footprint by taking decisive action now,” Mr. Chapman said during a public hearing on TVA’s power options Monday night.

TVA Senior Vice President Joe Hoagland, who is working on a new 20-year power plan for TVA, said TVA has agreed to buy more renewable energy from outside the valley. But most of the other options under consideration involve either TVA producing more power or TVA customers finding new ways to cut back on consumption.

Nearly 10 percent of the power generated in the seven-state TVA region comes from combined-cycle, natural gas plants built in the past decade by independent power producers. TVA buys some of the power from such plants, but more is available, Mr. Chapman said.

“It doesn’t feel like TVA is often considering the contributions that the independent plants can make to their overall resource needs,” Mr. Chapman said.

Other gas-fired generators could be built by independent power producers to replace TVA’s dirtiest plants without forcing the federal utility to increase its capital investments in new facilities, he said.

The federal utility has about 4,700 megawatts of power generation from coal plants that don’t have scrubbers to remove smog emissions and are more than a half century old, including the oldest six units at Widows Creek in Northeast Alabama and the John Sevier Plant in Northeast Tennessee. Such plants fail to meet federal environmental standards, according to a North Carolina judge, and may soon be scrapped or converted to other fuels.

Mr. Chapman said Magnolia’s 968-megawatt plant in Northern Mississippi was built six years ago but is only being used about 15 percent of the time.

“Standing ready to replace TVA’s outdated coal units are several combined-cycle plants like the one we operate,” he said.