Environmental Impact Statement for 2019 Update to the Integrated Resource Plan, 6668-6669 [2018-03027]

Agencies

• Tennessee Valley Authority

[Federal Register Volume 83, Number 31 (Wednesday, February 14, 2018)]
[Notices]
[Pages 6668-6669]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2018-03027]


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TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY


Environmental Impact Statement for 2019 Update to the Integrated 
Resource Plan

AGENCY: Tennessee Valley Authority.

ACTION: Notice of intent.

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SUMMARY: The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is conducting a study of 
its energy resources in order to update and replace the Integrated 
Resource Plan (IRP) and the associated Supplemental Environmental 
Impact Statement (EIS) that it completed in 2015. The IRP is a 
comprehensive study of how TVA will meet the demand for electricity in 
its service territory over the next 20 years. The 2015 IRP is being 
updated in response to major changes in electrical utility industry 
trends since 2015, including flat to slightly declining load growth, 
advances in the development of distributed energy resources and the 
integration of those resources in the electric grid. As part of the 
study, TVA intends to prepare a programmatic EIS to assess the impacts 
associated with the implementation of the updated IRP. TVA will use the 
EIS process to elicit and prioritize the values and concerns of 
stakeholders; identify issues, trends, events, and tradeoffs affecting 
TVA's policies; formulate, evaluate and compare alternative portfolios 
of energy resource options; provide opportunities for public review and 
comment; and ensure that TVA's evaluation of alternative energy 
resource strategies reflects a full range of stakeholder input. Public 
comment is invited concerning both the scope of the EIS and 
environmental issues that should be addressed as a part of this EIS.

DATES: To ensure consideration, comments on the scope and environmental 
issues must be postmarked, emailed or submitted online no later than 
April 16, 2018. To facilitate the scoping process, TVA will hold public 
scoping meetings; see https://www.tva.gov/irp for more information on 
the meetings.

ADDRESSES: Written comments should be sent to Ashley Pilakowski, NEPA 
Compliance Specialist, 400 West Summit Hill Dr., WT 11D, Knoxville, TN 
37902-1499. Comments may also be submitted online at: www.tva.gov/irp, 
or by email at [email protected].

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For general information about the NEPA 
process, please contact Ashley Pilakowski at the address above, by 
email at [email protected]. For general information on the IRP 
process, contact Hunter Hydas, Tennessee Valley Authority, 1101 Market 
Street, MR 3M-C, Chattanooga, TN 37402 or by email at [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This notice is provided in accordance with 
the Council on Environmental Quality's Regulations (40 CFR parts 1500 
to 1508) and TVA's procedures for implementing the National 
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). TVA is an agency and instrumentality 
of the United States, established by an act of Congress in 1933, to 
foster the social and economic welfare of the people of the Tennessee 
Valley region and to promote the proper use and conservation of the 
region's natural resources. One component of this mission is the 
generation, transmission, and sale of reliable and affordable electric 
energy.

TVA Power System

    TVA operates the nation's largest public power system, providing 
electricity to about 9 million people in an 80,000-square mile area 
comprised of most of Tennessee and parts of Virginia, North Carolina, 
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky. It provides wholesale 
power to 154 independent local power companies and 56 directly served 
large industries and federal facilities. The TVA Act requires the TVA 
power system to be self-supporting and operated on a nonprofit basis 
and directs TVA to sell power at rates as low as are feasible.
    Dependable generating capability on the TVA power system is 
approximately 37,000 megawatts. TVA generates most of the power it 
distributes with 3 nuclear plants, 7 coal-fired plants, 9 simple-cycle 
combustion turbine plants, 7 combined-cycle combustion turbine plants, 
29 hydroelectric dams, a pumped-storage facility, a methane-gas 
cofiring facility, a diesel-fired facility, and 16 small solar 
photovoltaic facilities. A portion of delivered power is provided 
through long-term power purchase agreements. In 2017, 25 percent of 
TVA's power supply was from coal; 38 percent from nuclear; 16 percent 
from natural gas; 9 percent from non-renewable purchases; 7 percent 
from hydro; and 5 percent from renewable power purchase agreements. TVA 
transmits electricity from these facilities over 16,000 circuit miles 
of transmission lines. Like other utility systems, TVA has power 
interchange agreements with utilities surrounding its region and 
purchases and sells power on an economic basis almost daily.

Resource Planning

    TVA develops an Integrated Resource Plan to identify the most 
effective energy resource strategies that will meet TVA's mission and 
serve the people of the Valley for the next 20 years. In 2015, TVA 
completed the Integrated Resource Plan and associated Supplemental EIS. 
Since 2015, several industry-wide changes have led TVA to begin 
development of the new IRP and associated EIS ahead of the 5-year cycle 
identified in the 2015 IRP. Natural gas supplies are abundant and are 
projected to remain available at lower cost. The electric system load 
is expected to be flat, or even declining slightly, over the next ten 
years. The price of renewable resources, particularly solar, continues 
to decline. Consumer demand for renewable and distributed energy 
resources (including distributed generation, storage, demand response, 
energy services, and energy efficiency programs) is growing.

Proposed Issues To Be Addressed

    Based on discussions with both internal and external stakeholders, 
TVA anticipates that the scope of the IRP EIS will include the cost and 
reliability of power, the availability and use of renewable and 
distributed energy resources, the effectiveness and implementation of 
demand side management options, the effect of energy efficiency 
programs, and the relationship of the economy to all of these options. 
The IRP EIS will address the effects of power production on the 
environment, including climate change, the effects of climate change on 
the Valley, and the waste and byproducts of TVA's power operations.
    Because of its nature as a planning document, the IRP will not 
identify specific locations for new resource options. Site-specific 
environmental effects of new resource options will be addressed in 
later site-specific assessments tiered off this programmatic EIS. 
Therefore, in this programmatic environmental impact statement, TVA 
anticipates that the environmental effects examined will primarily be 
those

[[Page 6669]]

at a regional level with some extending to a national or global level. 
Preliminary issues identified by TVA that will be reviewed in this 
analysis include:
     Emissions of greenhouse gases,
     fuel consumption,
     air quality,
     water quality and quantity,
     waste generation and disposal,
     land use,
     ecological,
     cultural resources,
     socioeconomic impacts and environmental justice.
    TVA invites suggestions concerning the list of issues which should 
be addressed. TVA also invites specific comments on the questions that 
will begin to be answered by this IRP:
     How do you think energy usage will change in the next 20 
years in the Tennessee Valley region?
     Should the diversity of the current power generation mix 
(e.g., coal, nuclear power, natural gas, hydro, renewable resources) 
change? If so, how?
     How should distributed energy resources be considered in 
TVA planning?
     How should energy efficiency and demand response be 
considered in planning for future energy needs and how can TVA directly 
affect electricity usage by consumers?
     And how will the resource decisions discussed above affect 
the reliability, dispatchability (ability to turn on or off energy 
resources) and cost of electricity?

Analytical Approach

    TVA employs a scenario planning approach when developing an IRP. 
The major steps in this approach include identifying the future need 
for power, developing scenarios and strategies, determining potential 
supply-side and demand-side energy resource options, developing 
portfolios associated with the strategies and ranking strategies and 
portfolios. The 2015 IRP, developed with extensive public involvement, 
evaluated six alternative energy resource strategies which differed in 
the amount of purchased power, energy efficiency and demand response 
efforts, renewable energy resources, nuclear generating capacity 
additions, and coal-fired generation. The alternative strategies were 
analyzed in the context of five different scenarios that described 
plausible future economic, financial, regulatory and legislated 
conditions, as well as social trends and adoption of technological 
innovations. TVA then developed a preferred alternative, the Target 
Power Supply Mix, based on guideline ranges for key energy resources. 
In developing the Target Power Supply Mix, TVA took into account its 
least-cost planning requirement and customer priorities of power cost 
and reliability, as well as other comments it received during the 
public comment periods. The Target Power Supply Mix established ranges, 
in MW, for coal plant retirements and additions of nuclear, 
hydroelectric, demand response, energy efficiency, solar, wind, and 
natural gas capacity. TVA anticipates using an analytical approach 
similar to that of the 2015 IRP/EIS described above. The number of 
alternative energy resource strategies and scenarios to be evaluated 
may differ from the 2015 IRP/EIS and will be determined after the 
completion of scoping.

Scoping Process

    Scoping, which is integral to the process for implementing NEPA, 
provides an early and open process to ensure that (1) issues are 
identified early and properly studied; (2) issues of little 
significance do not consume substantial time and effort; (3) the draft 
EIS is thorough and balanced; and (4) delays caused by an inadequate 
EIS are avoided.
    With the help of the public, TVA will identify the most effective 
energy resource strategy that will meet TVA's mission and serve the 
people of the Valley for the next 20 years. To ensure that the full 
range of issues and a comprehensive portfolio of energy resources are 
addressed, TVA invites members of the public as well as Federal, state, 
and local agencies and Indian tribes to comment on the scope of the IRP 
EIS. As part of the IRP process and in addition to other public 
engagement opportunities, TVA is assembling representatives from key 
stakeholders to participate in a working group that will discuss 
tradeoffs associated with different resource options and assist TVA in 
developing an optimal energy resource strategy.
    Comments on the scope of this IRP EIS should be submitted no later 
than the date given under the DATES section of this notice. Any 
comments received, including names and addresses, will become part of 
the administrative record and will be available for public inspection.
    After consideration of the comments received during this scoping 
period, TVA will summarize public and agency comments, identify the 
issues and alternatives to be addressed in the EIS, and identify the 
schedule for completing the EIS process. Following analysis of the 
issues, TVA will prepare a draft EIS for public review and comment. 
Notice of availability of the draft EIS will be published by the U.S. 
Environmental Protection Agency in the Federal Register. TVA will 
solicit written comments on the draft IRP and EIS and also hold public 
meetings for this purpose. TVA expects to release the draft IRP and EIS 
in late 2018. TVA anticipates issuing the final IRP and EIS in 2019.

    Dated: February 8, 2018.
M. Susan Smelley,
Director, Environmental Compliance and Operations.
[FR Doc. 2018-03027 Filed 2-13-18; 8:45 am]
 BILLING CODE 8120-08-P