What's Next for Coal?

Q&A with Coal Vice President Michael Bottorff

The TVA Board recently announced steps to continue operations at Kingston and Cumberland fossil plants and authorized TVA to operate those units beyond their current retirement dates, pending future permitting activities. Coal Vice President Michael Bottorff joins us to discuss the decision.

How did you feel when you heard this was possible?

I’m grateful the coal fleet has the support of the federal administration and the TVA Board. I am happy for the employees, their families and the communities they serve. Director Wade White thanked the nearly 900 employees at TVA coal plants by stating, “We value you, we need you and we are more than grateful for your commitment to TVA’s nearly 93-year-old mission.”

Why is this important to TVA?

As we look at TVA’s load growth, the coal fleet is absolutely critical in meeting rising power demands that we didn’t expect years ago when the Board originally decided to replace the coal units with gas generation, especially during summer and winter peaks like the recent Winter Storm Fern. Coal being online helps us to safely build additional generation. And with rapidly rising power demand, we are seeing more and more peak days where we need reliable and flexible generation to keep the power on.

Running these units means a lot to the local communities. I’ve spent seven years of my career working in the coal industry and I know firsthand the challenges of keeping these units online, but it’s for the benefit of the entire Valley region – it means the power comes on when you need it and expect it.

Our efforts to continue operation at these sites could result in significant economic benefits, including job certainty for our employees and for our communities. Local businesses see those benefits when we bring even more people in to support maintenance outages. And the continued diversity of our fuel mix, with the retention of coal, only further protects our reliability.

As TVA continues to meet growing demand, what else do you want people to know about coal generation?

This announcement is just the first step. We still have work to do and some future decisions to be made. Continued operation will likely require adjustment to some of our permits to align with environmental regulations. And we’ll need to invest in these plants to maintain the level of performance we’ve historically seen. Once we have that established, we’ll need to look further ahead and evaluate costs and needs, such as transmission upgrades to allow for gas and coal generation at the same site for grid stability.

Cumberland Fossil Plant

Kingston Fossil Plant