New Caledonia Gas Plant

Lowndes County, Mississippi

Updated February 19, 2025

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has issued a Record of Decision (ROD) to adopt TVA’s Preferred Alternative, Alternative B, for the construction of six dual-fuel frame combustion turbines (CTs) capable of generating approximately 500 MW at TVA’s existing New Caledonia (NCG) Site. Alternative B will achieve the purpose and need to support continued load growth within TVA's seven-state service territory in a way that is consistent with the recommendations in the 2019 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). The CTs are needed to provide dispatchable generation capacity to ensure that TVA can reliably meet required year-round generation, maximum capacity system demands, planning reserve margin targets, and comply with a primary objective under the TVA Act that power be sold at rates as low as feasible. The addition of CT units to the fleet supports meeting the growing demand for electricity and enhances system flexibility to integrate distributed resources and renewables such as solar generation. As the amount of solar generation in the TVA generation portfolio continues to increase, flexibility of the remainder of the fleet becomes even more important.  

Background and Previous Public Involvement

A Notice of Intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was published to the Federal Register on November 28, 2023. A public open house was held on January 8, 2024, in Caledonia, Mississippi, to provide additional information related to the proposed action to the public. Public comments on the scope of the EIS were collected through January 19, 2024. 

After consideration of comments received during the scoping period, TVA developed a Scoping Report that summarized public and agency comments that were received and identified the schedule for completing the EIS process. The scoping report was released on May 17, 2024.  

TVA released the draft EIS (DEIS) for public review on July 15, 2024. A Notice of Availability for the DEIS was published in the Federal Register on July 19, 2024, and public comments were accepted through September 4, 2024. Additionally, TVA held its public meeting for the DEIS on August 15, 2024, in Caledonia, Mississippi. Collectively, TVA received 100 comments on the DEIS from the public, agencies, and other interested parties.

TVA released the Final EIS (FEIS) to the public on January 6, 2025. A Notice of Availability for the Final EIS was published in the Federal Register on January 10, 2025. TVA’s responses to comments on the DEIS can be found in Appendix A of the FEIS.