In the face of increased pressures for cleaner energy, the Tennessee Valley Authority agreed Thursday to buy more than 2,000 megawatts worth of electricity from renewable sources. Some of the renewable power could enter TVA’s seven-state system as early as 2010.
The quantity of renewable energy being sought is substantially more than TVA will get from the $2.5 billion completion of a second 1,200-megawatt reactor at the Watts Bar nuclear station by 2013.
However, TVA claims that the Southeast currently lacks the capacity to meet TVA’s renewable energy needs, so the utility is looking at Dakota wind farms and landfill methane for renewable energy sources. TVA also said it has little interest in building its own renewable energy generators, even though TVA in the 1990s developed the Southeast’s first commercial wind farm at Buffalo Mountain near Knoxville.
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