The Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has approved the nation’s first pilot program to determine if closed coal ash storage areas are suitable for utility-scale solar projects. Pending environmental review and regulatory approval, the $216 million pilot project will explore a new approach to reuse a closed coal ash site at the Shawnee Fossil Plant to improve TVA’s clean energy efforts.
“The space between implementation and aspiration is where innovation lives,” said Jeff Lyash, president and CEO of TVA. “Achieving a net-zero clean energy future is critical to our nation’s energy security goals and requires new thinking and exploration of new technologies. TVA was created as a company of innovation and is uniquely positioned to demonstrate these technologies for the rest of the industry – in the US and around the world.
TVA’s Shawnee Fossil Plant is located on 1,696 acres approximately 10 miles northwest of Paducah, Kentucky. Shawnee has nine active generating units and one retired unit.
“TVA is focused on results and there is no single answer to reducing carbon emissions,” Lyash said. “Our path to a clean energy future may not always be linear, but our ultimate goal is to follow a defined strategy to accelerate the process throughout the industry and expand technologies that are not’ y carbon that will power our country’s sustainable clean energy economy without affecting reliability, stability or affordability.”
News item from TVA
