NASHVILLE — Nearly 4,000 Tennesseans criticized the Tennessee Valley Authority’s energy plan as short-sighted and over reliant on gas. The Sierra Club submitted 3,669 comments on behalf of its supporters as well as its own technical comments on TVA’s 2026 preliminary Integrated Resource Plan, the federal utility’s long-term energy plan that maps out how it plans to provide reliable energy for its ten million customers over the coming decades. TVA’s IRP significantly overrelies on a massive gas buildout and continued operation of aging, inefficient and costly coal plants. While the gas forecast is overblown, TVA’s plans for renewables have shrunk dramatically from its 2025 IRP. This unbalanced forecast not only artificially favors gas power, but it leaves customers on the hook for risky gas price changes. The rest of the nation understands this–utility companies across the South are investing meaningfully in new solar projects, but not TVA. “TVA should be leading the nation by building a renewable energy system that is cleaner, cheaper, and faster than gas or coal power,” said Bonnie Swinford, Campaign Organizing Strategist for Sierra Club. “Instead, TVA is propping up outdated coal plants and doubling down on an expensive and unreliable gas buildout while ignoring the overwhelming support for solar. We are all struggling to pay our energy bills, and TVA’s IRP would raise costs for all of us, even as coal continues to pollute our region’s air and water. TVA would rather serve corporate interests and data center developers than the public. We cannot allow that to happen.” Although TVA initially did not create meaningful public comment opportunities, months of advocacy from Sierra Club and other organizations pushed TVA to have an open comment period with a short turnaround time for the agency to review input from the public. Sierra Club collected nearly 300 postcards from across the Tennessee Valley region. About the Sierra Club The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person’s right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.
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