The federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report in December that takes a hard look at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) energy efficiency efforts and capital expenditure planning. The report recommends that (1) TVA complete its energy efficiency potential study and use that to inform its future energy efficiency efforts, and (2) that the [...]
Hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving with lots of family, friends and food. Many things to give thanks for today, including for me, that we may be on the verge of a significant investment in renewable energy that will benefit the Southeast. A recent article in the Tennessean titled “TVA may pipe in wind [...]
This blog was written by SACE intern Jeannie McKinney and Natalie Mims. Our nation has seen an exponential rise in environmental activism and energy problem solving within the last decade, and the Southeast is no exception. Today, community groups are starting to create their own energy and sustainability solutions to local and national environmental problems. [...]
A recent article in The Tennessean highlights one emerging reality for energy companies: people are consuming less energy. The excellent long-form piece by reporter Anne Paine, “TVA bets on rising demand: Less electricity use could increase costs” goes into detail about the decisions utilities face with energy use on the decline. Plans for new power [...]
This week marks the beginning of a federal trial resulting from the 2008 Kingston coal ash disaster. That environmental catastrophe resulted in 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic coal ash being dumped in Roane County, Tennessee, making it the biggest environmental disaster of its kind in history. Now, nearing the third anniversary of the disaster, [...]
Imagine you were head of an agency charged with providing affordable energy, stewarding the environment and supporting economic development and technological innovation. Now imagine that the agency operated a program that fostered the development of 100% clean and renewable energy from emerging technologies, created local jobs and attracted private investments in local communities, and cost [...]
SACE’s Federal Policy Director, Jennifer Rennicks recently penned an op-ed titled,“Stand up for clean air” in her hometown paper, the Asheville Citizen-Times. While one may be tempted to wonder who doesn’t support clean air, The Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act have become public enemy #1 for some members of Congress. In her [...]
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy has long been concerned with the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) push to add more nuclear reactors to their energy mix in spite of readily available energy efficiency and renewable energy alternatives. But TVA’s dogged pursuit to complete the nearly forty-year-old, antiquated Bellefonte site in Alabama is a unique and especially [...]
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently asked for stakeholder input on the potential to begin rulemaking proceedings regarding the reprocessing of used (spent) nuclear reactor fuel. Reprocessing is the separation of ‘fissionable’ uranium and plutonium from used nuclear fuel. A plutonium-based fuel could then be produced, often referred to as mixed-oxide fuel or “MOX,” [...]
The ongoing disaster in Japan at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has launched the nuclear debate to the forefront of energy discussions even here in the United States. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently launched a 90-day task force to assess the safety of the U.S. nuclear reactor fleet and to determine what measures the [...]
