Pipeline Approval Delay by FERC Threatens to Ensure Higher Carbon Emissions for Tennessee Valley Authority: Another Example of Damage to Economy and Environment by Environmental Groups

 

     Once again, environmental groups with the goal of reducing carbon emissions are effectively doing the opposite by working hard to oppose a gas-fired power plant that would replace coal-fired power. This is yet another of numerous examples where environmental litigation impedes environmental mitigation.          

     A group of radical environmental organizations filed suit against the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in June 2023. I don’t use the term ‘radical’ lightly. The plaintiffs include the Center for Biological Diversity, an innocuous-sounding group with a name that hides a history and agenda of radical extremism with the primary goal of filing lawsuits and extracting money from them. Also included is the Sierra Club, once a more benign organization that has in recent years become more radicalized against natural gas in all its forms. The third plaintiff is a group called Appalachian Voices that is involved in anti-fossil fuel activism against both coal and natural gas, as are the others. All of these groups have stated goals of eliminating fossil fuels, the same fossil fuels that currently make up over 80% of our primary energy consumption, and the same fossil fuels that provide affordable and reliable energy compared to comparable intermittent resources. Appalachian Voices lists about $5 million in assets. Sierra Club lists $79 million in assets and Center for Biological Diversity lists $43 million in assets. The total of the three is $123 million in assets, about 2.4% of the TVA’s $51 billion in assets. The environmental groups provide ideas, in particular the idea that fossil fuels must be opposed. Of course, the TVA employs more than 10,000 people and provides retirement to another 19,000 people. They are a wholly federal government-owned corporation. They are also capable of producing around 38GW of electricity at peak. They are one of the country’s biggest power providers, provides power to seven states, and operates 16,000 miles of transmission lines. According to their website, they have invested $17.2 billion “in a cleaner and more diverse energy generation mix since 2013,” and they have a target of 10GW of solar capacity by 2035. Thus, basically, these groups are suing a government-owned entity. As such an entity, it is fairly certain that their commitment to cleaner energy is solid.

     Appalachian Voices brags about stopping the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and delaying and massively increasing the cost of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which is 6 years behind schedule and $3.5 billion over budget due to the efforts of these environmentalist groups. These added costs may help lawyers, but they damage legitimate companies and cause economic damage to the American economy. That is not something to brag about. In addition to that, those delays have also delayed, and in some cases reversed, planned retirements of coal-fired plants and have obviously led to more carbon emissions. Like their co-plaintiffs and other environmental groups that oppose pipelines, they cited the high costs of the project making it uneconomic. Of course, the high costs are due almost entirely to the delays from the lawsuits! To make a rash analogy that’s kind of like breaking someone’s jaw and blaming the person for the inability to fulfill obligations because they have a broken jaw. I do believe strongly in protecting the environment, but I also believe these groups have abused the system, resulting in added costs and other damages to American companies and damage to the American economy as a whole. Perhaps the biggest irony is that in the final analysis, they are not protecting the environment but delaying its protection in many cases.

     Amanda Garcia of the Southern Environmental Law Center, another group that profits heavily off of opposing fossil fuels and has assets of $203 million, noted in an op-ed that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently praised the TVA’s gas plant and pipeline projects as “bridge” to clean energy. Politically, if we assume that the Democrat who runs the energy department sees the projects as vital, it stands to reason that half or more likely more than half of Democrats would agree. We can assume that nearly all Republicans would agree. That makes a minimum of 75% of Americans, and likely much more than that – my guess would be about 85% - that agree the projects are indeed desirable and should be pursued. My question, then, is why should the opinions of 15-25% of the population be given the power to delay and increase costs for what 75-85% of the population desire? Of course, they are also delaying the decarbonization of our energy systems by denying pragmatic relative decarbonization (replacing coal with natural gas) that ensures reliable energy, in pursuit of a more absolute decarbonization (replacing coal with solar, wind, and energy storage) that is unreliable and that would have much higher upfront costs.

     Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company wrote a letter to FERC on December 5, requesting approval for the 32-mile, 30-inch pipeline to deliver gas to the power plant. In the letter, they noted that without timely approval they would not be able to complete the pipeline in time for the planned retirement of the first coal unit of the coal plant by September 2025. They had applied for a FERC permit in July, after the final Environmental Impact Statement was submitted, requesting action by November 1 to keep on schedule. The letter noted: “TGP explained that authorization by that date {November 1} would allow TGP to complete the acquisition of needed rights-of-way and construction of the Cumberland Project in the time frame required by the September 1, 2025 in-service date requested by TVA. The Commission and its staff have completed a thorough review of the proposed Project, including review of environmental issues that began in the pre-filing process for the Project that was opened in November 2021 in Docket No. PF22-2-000 and continued throughout the Application review process.”

 

“While TGP has worked, and continues to work, diligently with affected landowners to acquire the necessary permanent rights-of-way and temporary workspaces for the construction and operation of the Project facilities, as well as with regulatory agencies to acquire other necessary permits and authorizations for the Project, Commission approval of the Project is now critical to avoid delays that threaten the construction and in-service schedule for the Project. Implementation of the Commission’s Order No. 871-B and 18 C.F.R. § 157.23 means that construction of the Project is unlikely to be able to start until at least five months after the Commission issues the certificate. In addition, the construction schedule requires TGP to accommodate narrow tree felling/clearing and construction windows to avoid or minimize impacts to environmental resources.”

 

Thus, we can see that pipeline construction is subject to certain conditions that take time and that involve limited construction seasons for different parts of the project. Both can be delayed significantly by delays in approvals. The environmental groups are well aware of these issues and actively exploit them.

     On January 3, 2024, TVA wrote a letter to FERC, noting that the pipeline in question was not on their December 19 docket and requesting approval of the pipeline project. They noted what follows in their letter to FERC:

 

“Continued delay in the Commission acting on TGP’s Application has the potential to: (a) delay TVA’s retirement of unit 1 of the Cumberland Fossil Plant, which would lead to additional construction, repairs, and maintenance upgrades and costs to maintain reliability and comply with environmental regulatory requirements such as Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Effluent Limitation Guidelines and Clean Water Act Section 316(b) requirements;4 (b) delay TVA’s ability to develop and implement a path to approximately 80% carbon reduction by 2035, and to realize its aspiration to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050;5 and (c) create additional environmental, economic, and reliability risks.6 Further, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) assesses that between 2024 - 2028, TVA’s service territory has high risk of future electricity shortfalls under normal as well as extreme conditions.7 The Cumberland Project is critical to helping TVA meet its current and future customers’ electric supply needs as well as sustaining and enhancing the long-term reliability and resiliency of TVA’s electric grid.”

 

     The environmental groups say that the projects is not in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which they call the nation’s bedrock environmental law. Perhaps it is for them since it has been invoked to delay and deny many permits for energy and infrastructure projects. They also noted that the coal plant went offline during the unprecedented Winter Strom Elliot in December 2022 as well as some gas plants, resulting in rolling blackouts for the first time in history for TVA. Of course, it is hard to see how something like solar energy could in any way hope to replace that power in the shortest days of the year that were also overcast due to the storm. The lawsuit goes on to mention the reasons for the NEPA violation:

“But TVA failed to fairly evaluate the things that matter, including the climate-warming impacts of the Plant’s emissions, the viability of carbon-free alternatives, and the cost of mitigating emissions in compliance with the climate objectives of the United States to decarbonize the power sector. TVA also failed to account for game-changing developments, like the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) and the wide-spread failure of TVA’s coal- and gas-fired fleet during Winter Storm Elliott. These failures and others violate NEPA.”

 

They also noted that some members of their organizations own property that the pipeline would cross resulting in environmental damage to their property. I have a 20-inch pipeline going across my property and there are no environmental issues from it of which I am aware. The cleared right-of-way does offer some nice views of the sunset. The usual arguments about erosion and sedimentation are included as well as arguments that the pollution from the gas plant would affect people, never mind the fact that pollution emissions from the gas plant are magnitudes less than the emissions endured for the last 50 years from the coal plant. Emissions such as SO2 and particulates are nearly eliminated, and NOx emissions are less than half or much more from a new gas plant replacing an old coal plant. There is also no coal ash produced by a gas plant. TVA cited much longer time frames (9-11 years as opposed to 2-4 years) and much-increased costs ($500 million minimum) for not proposing renewables, battery storage, and transmission upgrades to replace the coal plant. My guess is that the result would have ended up being far less reliable than the gas plant.

     A supplement to the lawsuit notes that since the pipeline has one company, TVA, that it will sell gas to, if that company decides not to build the plant, then the pipeline will have no purpose. They cited a case in Pennsylvania where trees were cleared for a pipeline that was ultimately not built – of course, due to environmentalist obstruction.

     Utility Dive summarizes the lawsuit as follows: “In the suit, the groups contend the TVA violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to adequately consider how the gas-fired power plant would affect the climate, the environment, and power customers, and without fairly evaluating carbon-free energy alternatives.” In essence, it’s the same argument used to oppose every fossil fuel project.

     I and many others have argued for permit reform, specifically for all energy projects: fossil, nuclear, and renewable energy projects, and infrastructure. One part of that reform should be to reduce the power of these groups that represent a minority of Americans to routinely oppose and file suits against virtually every such project. In a way, it is a form of extortion.

 

 

References:

TVA may delay 2,470-MW coal plant shutdown over FERC pipeline inaction. Ehan Howland. Utility Dive. January 4, 2024. TVA may delay 2,470-MW coal plant shutdown over FERC pipeline inaction | Utility Dive

RE: TENNESSEE GAS PIPELINE COMPANY, L.L.C. DOCKET NO. CP22-493-000 REQUEST FOR COMMISSION ACTION. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. January 3, 2024. 20240103-5125_TVA Cumberland FERC Letter 01.03.24.pdf

RE: Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company, L.L.C. Docket No. CP22-493-000. Request for Commission Action. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. December 5, 2023. 20231205-5094_Cumberland Project-Request for Commission Action.pdf

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE NASHVILLE DIVISION. APPALACHIAN VOICES, CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY, and SIERRA CLUB, Plaintiffs, v. TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY, Defendant. Case No. _________. COMPLAINT For Declaratory and Injunctive Relief. 20230614_docket-323-cv-00604_complaint-1.pdf (climatecasechart.com)

Stop Pipelines & Fracked Gas. Appalachian Voices. Website. Stop Pipelines & Fracked Gas > Appalachian Voices (appvoices.org)

Mountain Valley Pipeline. Appalachian Voices. Website. Mountain Valley Pipeline > Appalachian Voices (appvoices.org)

DOE should call TVA gas plans what they are: a bridge to nowhere. Amanda Garcia. Tennessee Lookout. December 14, 2023. DOE should call TVA gas plans what they are: a bridge to nowhere – Tennessee Lookout

Tennessee Valley Authority. Website. Our Service Commitment (tva.com)

APPALACHIAN VOICES’ AND SIERRA CLUB’S SUPPLEMENTAL COMMENT ON THE FINAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT FOR THE CUMBERLAND PIPELINE. November 14, 2023. 20231114-5099_TGP_supplemental_comment.pdf

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE NASHVILLE DIVISION. APPALACHIAN VOICES, CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY, and SIERRA CLUB, Plaintiffs, v. TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY, Defendant. Case No. 3:23-cv-00604. District Judge Eli J. Richardson. Magistrate Judge Barbara D. Holmes. AMENDED COMPLAINT. For Declaratory and Injunctive Relief. August 8, 2023. 20231114-5099_Attachment 1 - Amended Complaint.pdf