By Alton Wallace
The Center Square

Two coal-fired power plants in Tennessee that had been scheduled for closure in 2026 and 2028 will be kept open for the “foreseeable future” after a unanimous vote by the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority on Wednesday in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

The TVA, the nation’s largest public utility with about 10 million customers, will continue operating coal-burning units at the Kingston Fossil Plant and the Cumberland Fossil Plant, which currently provide a combined 3.8 gigawatts of power, enough to serve 2.7 million homes on an average day.

The vote comes after four new board members appointed by President Donald Trump were sworn in on Jan. 12, restoring a voting quorum to the nine-member panel for the first time in nearly a year.

Trump dismissed three board members during the first half of 2025, and the Senate voted to confirm three replacements along with a nominee for a vacant seat just before the end of the year.

The board also voted to scrap plans for a new solar facility at the Kingston plant, although it maintained plans to add a natural gas-fired generation unit with 1.5 gigawatts of capacity. At the Cumberland Fossil Plant, the TVA will continue construction on a 1.45-gigawatt gas generation unit along with a 100-megawatt battery storage system.

Advocacy groups including the Southern Environmental Law Center and Appalachian Voices blasted TVA’s decision, saying it was made without notifying impacted communities.

TVA executive vice president and chief financial officer Tom Rice said the utility’s need to meet rapidly increasing energy demand from data centers and population growth, as well as shifts in the federal regulatory landscape, makes it necessary to keep the coal-fired plants in service.

Since January 2023, when the previous board authorized retirement of the coal-generation units at the two plants, the TVA has seen a number of key changes, with a large increase in electricity demand and a declaration of an energy emergency, said Rice.

“We’ve also seen a significant change in the regulatory outlook, particularly for coal, and that creates both the opportunity and the need for us to revisit these decisions,” he said.

Wade White, director of the committee that studied the proposal to keep the coal plants running, has consistently advocated for “coal resiliency” while criticizing “stringent environmental regulations” targeting coal’s economic viability since he joined the board as a Biden appointee in 2022.

“Coal, like other energy resources, should be a part of a comprehensive strategy for delivering reliable, resilient, and affordable electrician to TVA customers,” White said at the meeting.

“Since TVA opened its first coal fired plant during World War II, coal has been a driving force for our power system and over 85 years later, it is still at the heart of what we do,” White said. “For a rural Kentuckian like me, who has known people who work in the western Kentucky mines and others who work at plants like The Shawnee Fossil Plant near Paducah, it is especially gratifying to present these recommendations to the TVA board for approval.”

The TVA is not alone; multiple utilities and regulatory bodies across the U.S. have recently decided to delay planned coal plant retirements, including Dominion Energy, PacifiCorp, Santee Cooper, Alliant Energy and Northern Indiana Public Service.

“TVA already found these coal plants to be uneconomical and unreliable, and that hasn’t changed just because the administration wants to keep coal online,” said Leah McCord, Tennessee Projects and Coalition Coordinator at Appalachian Voices. “For TVA to take this action without public input is contrary to the public power model these new board members all recently affirmed.”

The U.S. Department of Energy on Thursday announced it awarded funding totaling $175 million for six projects that will modernize, retrofit and extend the life of coal-fired power plants that serve rural and remote communities in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina.

The projects are part of a $525 million program aimed at expanding and reinvigorating America’s coal power generation through targeted upgrades that increase efficiency, extend plant life and add dependable capacity using infrastructure already built and connected to the grid, according to the Energy Department.