Top Utilities Provide Exclusive Insights Into the Pressing Need for More Power

very year, via data gathered from an annual questionnaire in addition to our staff’s own research into utilities with active economic development departments, Site Selection recognizes the Top Utilities in economic development based on corporate end-user project activity in their regions.

This year, in addition to asking traditional questions about project attraction, capital investment, job creation and services, we asked one extra question:

“Power provision is vying with workforce as the most pressing issue for industrial companies nationwide amid a glut of major industrial facility projects (data centers, semiconductor fabs, EV/battery supply chain, etc.). How is your utility’s economic development team working with operations and external stakeholders to address these concerns?”

The answers, like the robust day-to-day solutions from this select group of winners, can be compelling. Below, in alphabetical order by name of utility, are the responses from some of this year’s Top Utilities. — Adam Bruns

Alabama Power: “As we evaluate where our electrical system can serve very large loads, communities need to evaluate what types of projects they want to prioritize. Alabama Power has taken the lead role in educating the candidate communities on the needs and interests of these unique prospects. From a utility perspective, Alabama Power has formed a cross-functional committee comprised of members in economic development, resource planning, sales, transmission, regulatory and others to discuss the current state of economic development activity and upcoming opportunities and challenges.”

Alliant Energy: “Alliant Energy is known for its reliable energy. As a utility it is our responsibility and obligation to serve the energy needs of all customers — both current and new customers. With the growth of major industrial facility projects, access to electrical capacity is critically important … Supply chain challenges continue to be seen across the utility industry. Orders for equipment that took six months to fulfill in 2020 now take 24-80 months. We expect delays to continue due to labor, raw material and component shortages.” Alliant Energy Director of Supply Chain Management David Watkins said, “Alliant Energy is taking significant actions to ensure we have an adequate supply of critical equipment to deliver the energy services our current and future customers rely on. We are working with our suppliers, government entities and industry groups, optimizing our inventory and exploring alternative solutions to safely and reliably keep the lights on and the power flowing.”

American Electric Power: 2023 was the year of “large loads,” says Timothy Wells of AEP. “Early in the year, AEP established an internal large-load strategy and working team to address the seemingly sudden onslaught of enormous load inquiries. It became more critical than ever to be able to accurately forecast and plan for how we could serve these large, critical energy-intensive projects.” The team led by Wells included members from transmission and distribution planning, interconnect solutions, project execution, economic forecasting, customer services and executive leadership organizations. “We redesigned the internal systems for how we track critical project information, ensured consistency across the enterprise and our seven operating companies, re-trained hundreds of staff on proper project tracking and data entry, and then built out reports and dashboards based on one single-source-of-truth database. The team also worked on a comprehensive overhaul on the contractual agreement process we follow across our operating companies for engaging companies on new projects. Accuracy is paramount — not over- or under-estimating our load forecasts. And this accurate data is critical for our economic forecasting team to signal our load forecasts correctly to the Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs).”

In testimony to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in May 2024, AEP Interim President and CEO Ben Fowke said, “AEP currently has requests from large customers that would more than double the existing peak demand we serve on our system today. It took over 100 years of planning and building to create our current system, and a step-change in infrastructure investment on an accelerated timeline will be required to serve even a fraction of this future demand in a reliable manner.” His recommendations included working with regulators to ensure electric system resource adequacy and prevent premature retirements of dispatchable power plants; expediting the deployment of new 24/7, dispatchable and clean generation resources, including small modular nuclear reactors; and encouraging FERC’s recent efforts to support the efficient development of necessary regional and interregional electric transmission facilities.”

Arizona Public Service: To keep up with this level of energy demand, APS is making necessary investments so customers can continue to benefit from a strong and reliable power supply that is transitioning to 100% clean and carbon-free by 2050. Over the next several years, APS customers will benefit from careful planning that ensures reliability, maintains affordability and secures increasing amounts of cost-effective renewable energy. By 2027, APS will seek to add more than 6,000 MW of solar and wind power, coupled with battery storage, which will provide the greatest long-term value and affordability to customers. With this technology, APS can capture that clean renewable energy and store it for customers to use later, when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.

Maintaining a balanced energy mix will be critical to keeping the lights on as APS plans to exit from coal-fired electricity generation in 2031. During our transition from legacy coal facilities, APS will utilize flexible natural gas resources that can ramp up quickly during times of the day when customers need electricity the most and make use of existing infrastructure to maintain customer affordability.

In addition, APS recently filed the 2023 APS Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) at the Arizona Corporation Commission. It includes strategic years-ahead planning to continue to provide customers a reliable power supply well into the future. The 2023 IRP provides a 15-year outlook on how much electricity APS customers will need and what investments are necessary to address those needs with around-the-clock energy amid unprecedented growth of people and businesses moving to Arizona.

APS worked with its Resource Planning Advisory Council (RPAC), a stakeholder group that includes local consumer advocates, university researchers, resource developers and environmental and public interest organizations. This group participated in meetings and workshops over the last year to incorporate transparency, diverse perspectives and extensive dialogue into the integrated resource planning process.

With this careful planning and consideration, APS is well positioned to handle the opportunities and obstacles unprecedented power demands may create.

ComEd: Since many companies currently have a “power first strategy”, ComEd is increasingly the first stakeholder many prospects see when considering Illinois. And we make the first impression for the state. The biggest challenge remains meeting customers’ timelines by addressing the continuing supply chain issues that have created much longer than historic delivery times for major equipment such as transformers, circuit breakers, and switchgear control buildings. To mitigate this, ComEd collects long lead material deposits very early in the engineering process to secure manufacturing production slots from our vendor/supplier network. Additionally, ComEd has strategically deployed mobile transformers on a temporary basis to help Illinois win a large project that enabled the new customer to be able to connect to the grid quickly with an initial amount of large power above what the local distribution grid could support. We will be expanding the program offering in the future with additional equipment begin procured.

We’ve also established two new recurring meetings that are proving worthwhile. Internally, the Economic Development Council is a monthly meeting with our CEO, senior leadership team, and key supporting departments where we discuss the pipeline of projects and issues that require strategic guidance and input to ensure proper alignment of engineering teams to address customer needs. Externally, we’ve expanded our state-level engagement beyond the direct economic development teams at the Department of Commerce and Intersect Illinois to now include monthly meetings with the Illinois Governor’s Office to align on messaging and status of large project opportunities as well as better education (and new understanding) of our process for serving large load projects.

Consumers Energy: Our goal is to make sure we’re supporting Michigan’s business climate and to meet growing businesses’ needs. Consumers Energy’s economic development team remains agile in our approach and committed to being a thought partner on site readiness activities and a member of most local and state stakeholder platforms to ensure alignment on key economic development topics and project support.

We see our biggest obstacles being the diversification of energy at a pace fast enough to meet the growing energy demands including supply chain constraints. Consumers Energy’s Electric Supply team is dedicated to finding safe, reliable, affordable, and clean energy and capacity solutions to support growth in Michigan. The team evaluates each project individually to determine customer and site needs and deploy solutions to support near- and long-term energy demand. Flexibility, and creative uses our many assets, are key aspects of our strategy — namely determining the best way to utilize current and future land, interconnects, community relationships, and assets. It is the team’s goal to serve all current and future customers in Michigan with safe, affordable, reliable and increasingly clean electric supply.

To further Michigan’s success, we are supporting site readiness efforts as the pace of vehicle electrification accelerates. More electric vehicle (EV) and EV component manufacturers and other energy-intensive industries need more sites quicker than ever. The challenge is identifying and categorizing sites to give prospective energy-intensive businesses a clearer up-to-the-minute picture of available sites and their attributes. That includes a broad site inventory that categorizes parcels according to each business’ needs –—from existing or upgradeable energy infrastructure onsite to the site’s ability to accommodate long-term growth goals. The Verified Industrial Properties (VIP) program is led by the Detroit Regional Partnership, a public-private economic development partnership, VIP is designed to advance industrial site readiness across the 11-county Detroit region with engagement from partners, including Consumers Energy, Michigan’s largest electric and natural gas utility. This initiative is changing the way the region and state approach site readiness.

In addition to the regional effort, as mentioned earlier, MEDC has created the MI Sites Program to address the real estate needs of companies seeking to locate or expand operations in Michigan. The primary objective of the MI Sites program is to develop a statewide portfolio of industrial ready sites for marketing to companies and site selectors throughout the world. To help accomplish this objective, consistent statewide criteria for site readiness have been established and Consumers Energy is a proud #Team Michigan participant.

Dominion Energy: Getting to the table early and often is key. Our dedicated economic development experts stay in contact with our partners to understand energy needs and develop creative solutions.

An “all of the above” mix is needed to close the power gap, and we have successfully navigated similar challenges before. As in the past, the commonsense solution involves a balanced, diverse mix of energy sources that are reliable, affordable and increasingly clean.

Duke Energy: Duke Energy is performing additional system modeling, risk mitigation actions, and new considerations around generation, such as timeline to provide service. The company is also doing more work with internal and external stakeholders and our regulators to adequately plan for large load demands now and into the future.

The company is currently focusing on large load projects that have a customer commitment or advanced stage of engagement, or where the company’s service area is being seriously considered and shortlisted. By utilizing take-or-pay clauses that require new large load customers to agree to pay for a minimum amount of energy upfront no matter how much they end up using, they are also ensuring other customers are protecting from the cost of this demand. Duke Energy is also considering agreements that would require up-front contributions to build new power infrastructure for these large data centers.

Duke Energy is already demonstrating how it can accelerate service of large customer needs and the transition to cleaner energy, while reducing financial risks and supporting economic development in its communities. The company recently announced MOUs (memorandums of understanding) with Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nucor to explore new and innovative approaches to support carbon-free energy generation and help utilities serve the future energy needs of large businesses in North Carolina and South Carolina.

These new tariffs are designed specifically to lower the long-term costs of investing in clean energy technologies like new nuclear and long-duration storage through early commitments. They would enable large customers like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nucor to directly support carbon-free energy generation investments through innovative financing structures and contributions that address project risk to lower costs of emerging technologies. ACE tariffs would facilitate beneficial on-site generation at customer facilities, participation in load flexibility programs and investments in clean energy assets – features attractive to customers with large-scale energy needs.

El Paso Electric: For larger projects, the transmission supply chain lead times are often longer than project requirements. Advance queue positions, more queue positions, and partnerships have helped to curb the impacts of supply chain constraints. Additionally, our communities continue to focus on traditionally sized projects that may not require transmission-level service, but are providing large job counts relative to MWs consumed.

Entergy: Macro-economic trends are driving industries to look to the U.S. and Entergy’s region is uniquely positioned to serve these interests through our natural advantages, low energy costs and clean energy solutions. With that in mind, our activities to develop these major industrial projects are tailored to meet the needs of all our customers. Our economic development teams are working hand-in-hand with potential customers, regulators and community partners to find solutions to meet this growing need.

Entergy Louisiana is actively collaborating with internal operations teams, state, and local partners to address concerns specific to power provision. This includes proactive transmission buildouts and upgrades to increase electrical capacity in areas of the state currently restricted which are a limiting factor for economic growth. Entergy Louisiana’s recent application to the LPSC for the buildout of additional transmission infrastructure along the west bank of the Mississippi River will be transformative to both the local and state economies. This expansion of additional capacity leads to new industrial growth that comes with economic expansion currently not probable.

To meet both growing energy demands and renewable energy concerns, Entergy Louisiana is expanding renewable generation and options for our customers. Entergy Louisiana has two renewable voluntary tariffs Geaux Green and Geaux Zero made available to support commercial and industrial customer needs. The recent approval by the LPSC for Entergy Louisiana to add 3 GWs of economic solar power to our generation portfolio expands our renewable offering and assists in the company's goal to be net-zero by 2050. Entergy Louisiana is carefully pursuing new generation and transmission opportunities along with grid hardening efforts to best position state and localities for current and future economic growth. 

Entergy Mississippi sponsored Human Resource & Plant Manager roundtables held in partnership with local economic development organizations. The roundtables provided opportunities for industry leaders to openly discuss and exchange ideas/resources on how to address common workforce issues within the community. This effort is continuing into 2024.

Entergy Texas is engaging our customers in meaningful conversations to determine realistic timelines and opportunities to support each other’s development plans. We are addressing concerns proactively by forecasting anticipated load and customer demands to ensure we are prepared to serve them. We have included long lead items in the reimbursement agreement to expedite equipment delivery, we have adapted our renewable resource offerings to best accommodate the needs of our customers and we have clearly defined our strategy to serve our customers bringing them along under MOUs. We are pursuing approval of new generating assets to continue to meet the needs of our customers and recently announced our STEP Ahead strategy.

FPL: FPL is constantly working to strengthen its infrastructure and improve reliability for more than 12 million customers across the state. From hardening and undergrounding to adding smart meters, modernizing our system is a priority.

We’ve also replaced nearly all of our transmission structures – the backbone of the energy grid – with steel or concrete poles.

At FPL, we continue to diversify our fuel mix and keep customer bills as low as possible. FPL is building more low-cost solar than any other utility in the country.

Pairing solar with battery storage helps us deliver that low-cost solar energy to customers, even when the sun isn’t shining.

FPL is also working on new innovations in green hydrogen. In February of this year, FPL announced it completed its pilot clean hydrogen facility. FPL’s Cavendish NextGen Hydrogen Hub will help the company explore using clean hydrogen to offset the use of natural gas to run a traditional power plant.

We will also continue working with our EDO partners to identify and market their sites and work internally to determine and market what energy resources can be provided at those sites.

Making it easy for consultants and companies to find what they’re looking for is always our priority. 

Georgia Power: In addition to the success of bringing on two nuclear plant units, Georgia Power took the proactive stance of filing an updated Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) in 2023, between three-year cycles.

The reason for this IRP was the extraordinary demand that large manufacturing projects and data centers were creating. Georgia Power’s Economic Development team was instrumental in informing the upcoming load forecast to ensure Georgia meets the needs of businesses and their clean energy requirements. The 2023 update is expected to put downward pressure on rates and includes resources such as battery energy storage systems (BESS), new and expanded distributed energy resources (DER), demand response programs, as well as conventional power plants.

[On August 29, Georgia Power announced it had identified four locations in Bibb, Lowndes, Floyd and Cherokee counties for 500 MW of new battery energy storage systems (BESS) authorized by the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) earlier this year. — Ed.]

Kentucky’s Touchstone Energy Cooperatives: Our Kentucky’s Touchstone Energy Cooperatives team has been preparing from an electric generation and transmission standpoint for the opportunities that are presenting themselves in the industrial renaissance we are witnessing now. From assisting existing companies to new mega projects seeking massive amounts of electricity, our cooperatives have been working hand-in-hand with companies to meet their electrification and de-carbonization efforts. 

We are satisfying the thirst for more power by planning for additional generation including solar and hydro, as well as leveraging our membership in the PJM Interconnection, the largest electric grid and market in North America. This allows our cooperatives to supply a diverse and growing portfolio of energy to help our rural communities capture these transformational industrial opportunities.  

Our team is also pairing our development of viable mega sites with existing and planned electric infrastructure buildouts that are crucial for the accelerated timelines of site selection projects. 

Graph courtesy of Kentucky’s Touchstone Energy Cooperatives

LG&E and KU: There is no doubt that the energy industry is crucial to the future of our communities, states and nation with an influx of opportunities related to consumer demands for more technology while at the same time being challenged with supply chain issues, and regulatory and policy issues.

In 2018, LG&E and KU further solidified economic development as a core operational mission by investing in more personnel and programs, and elevating leadership positions. Today, the economic development team not only works projects and assists communities but participates in cross-functional operations activities such as the development of our integrated resource plan, to long-range infrastructure planning, to state policy and regulatory strategy development.

LG&E and KU is a vertically integrated utility owning regulated electric generation, transmission and distribution as well as a gas distribution system. Our system operates to fulfill our obligation to our customer base and not to a market, which give us the unique opportunity to more closely plan for and invest in long-term assets that not only perform as our customers need it to today, but for what it needs to be in the future.

Our integrated resource plan (IRP) looks at a 15-year planning horizon and models new possible demands on our system and matches it with our resources to identify possible needed investments. Unlike a Regional Transmission Organization (RTO), where merchant generating sources are built based on shorter-term contracts for new generation, LG&E and KU are charged and regulated to ensure the needs of our customers are met and resource adequacy is not a risk factor for the long-term horizon. For this exercise, the economic development team interacts very regularly with sales forecasters and generation planners to inform them of trends, report on new load opportunities and generally provide valuable inputs to the process.

Our site evaluation process, which not only studies existing sites but evaluates new opportunities, often includes investments from our Opportunity Kentucky Fund which is governed internally by manager and director level employees from corporate communications, distribution system planning, transmission planning and construction, gas planning and construction, and rates and regulatory affairs. This governance structure gives operational areas visibility and insight into how our communities are growing and what they’re planning for so that we can plan along with them.

The economic development team is often a presenter at quarterly company-wide management meetings to inform all levels of leadership on strategic initiatives, trends and successes to ensure the entire company feels part of the economic development mission of the company. Externally, the team has provided support for cases before the Kentucky Public Service Commission and has even provided expert witness in cases related to our economic development mission. Having a seat at the table in these important proceedings provides our regulatory body with insights valuable to their decision-making processes and regulatory mission. The team regularly provides training to project managers and the business development team at the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development and speaks at conferences and training events. We’ve initiated processes for site development that have caused our communities to plan for and work with us more closely, particularly planning for larger load projects that exist in the market today.

Our biggest obstacles for the future relate more to timing than anything. As noted, due to our fully vertically integrated status, we have an obligation to provide safe and reliable service at the lowest reasonable cost to our customers. Therefore, as new load opportunities arise that provide valuable economic development opportunities for our state and communities, we have the ability to advocate for the development of our resources and grid to serve them. The problem is, it takes much longer to build a power plant and, in some cases, build new power and gas lines than it does to build an industrial building, warehouse or data center. The economic development team will continue to advocate for policies, pilots or other mechanisms that enable proactive investments in our service territory so that we can utilize our system control and serve those projects that may be too risky in other areas where certainty and obligation are less than defined.

Our biggest opportunity is to capitalize on our recent success, tell our story, and drive confidence with large corporate site selection projects. LG&E and KU just finished building infrastructure for the largest announced project in Kentucky’s history. BlueOvalSK’s Battery Park and the two 4-million-square-foot facilities required a huge amount of power, infrastructure and redundancy to make the historic decision. LG&E and KU not only supplied the necessary plan for the customer to be successful, but we finished the project on time (or ahead of schedule), on budget and with no safety incidents. In the process, all necessary regulatory approvals were received, rights of way acquired from 37 landowners,14 miles of new transmission lines were constructed, two massive new substations built, a half mile of gas pipeline constructed, and all customer contracts executed.

We have the expertise to execute large projects and we meet dates and customer expectations according to plan. That should give great confidence to future prospects and projects that we can help them be successful here in Kentucky, despite the current challenges.

PECO: This is a very important question that really highlights the importance of the utility economic development function. Utilities must balance the obligation to keep costs down by using as much capacity as possible from their existing infrastructure with having capacity to supply new or expanding customers. As the amount of load requested becomes bigger, whether it’s for electric vehicle charging or higher density electric loads, developers find that significant upgrades in distribution and/or substation facilities would be required in order to supply the electric requirements. The utility economic development teams are the perfect group to address this issue since we work at the intersection of development and utility infrastructure. It’s important that we 1) work with our partners in the region to listen to developers and gather feedback on future development plans, and 2) engage the utility capacity planning teams to provide this feedback and facilitate the collaboration with external partners to account for market conditions in long range capacity planning.

PowerSouth: “RESPONSIBLY KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON.” PowerSouth’s economic development, community development and governmental affairs teams work closely with both the business and operations teams. PowerSouth’s Large Load Task Force, comprised of representatives from multiple business divisions, meets to evaluate any large project and determine the ability to responsibily deliver the capacity needed.

Through this process, the company has identified strategic challenges and opportunities. The biggest challenge facing our industry are increasing regulations and the rapid push toward renewables. At the end of the day, it’s about responsibility — about operating a safe, reliable and affordable power supply to provide electric service to more than 460,000 homes, businesses and industries.

How is it done? With an all-the-above energy mix that includes natural gas, coal, hydro, nuclear and solar. It’s important to strike the right balance. Renewables are intermittent (for example, solar only works when the sun shines), so adding too much, too fast would hurt PowerSouth’s ability to keep power flowing during peak demand times, like cold winter mornings. That’s why the cooperative has a large supply of capacity power from natural gas facilities, coal, and most recently, nuclear.

Salt River Project: SRP is addressing this unprecedented load demand by having the Economic Development and Distribution Planning teams working together. Both teams meet in a regular basis with all the cities’ economic development departments in the service territory with the goal of understanding where cities envision future commercial growth and where infrastructure investment will be occurring. This information is then incorporated into Distribution Planning’s annual planning process. Through this process SRP is able to gather information on sites that will be rezoned and could have an impact on future load demand.

Another approach that SRP is taking to address this issue is through the strong collaboration between the Economic Development and Load Forecast teams. The load requests that come through the SRP economic development pipeline have a direct impact in SRP’s Load Forecast. These teams have created a matrix that tracks the probability of completion of large projects and the projects with higher probability of completion get incorporated into SRP load forecast. This approach improves SRP’s load forecast, which is crucial to anticipating the future generation resources that will be needed.

One of the biggest obstacles has been supply chain delays such as the long lead time to purchase electrical equipment for projects, especially transformers. Another challenge is retiring generation resources that are part of SRP’s baseload while experiencing an unprecedented load demand growth.

One of the biggest opportunities of this load growth is the current and future economic activity occurring in the Greater Phoenix area, which will bring numerous jobs to the region and increase the quality of life in the valley.

SRP linemen conduct maintenance on a power line.

South Carolina Power Team: In 2023, the South Carolina electric cooperatives announced an addition of over 700 megawatts of new industrial load to their system, on top of more than 1 gigawatt added in the past five years. This projection does not account for the unprecedented growth in commercial and residential load our system is currently experiencing. Our service area covers 70% of the state's land mass, including all 46 counties, with much of the growth occurring within our territory.

The Southeastern states are facing a significant power availability crisis, and our state is no exception. However, because our cooperatives focus solely on reliable distribution rather than generation, we have the flexibility to source power from external partners, ensuring both affordability and reliability.

Southeast Gas: Southeast Gas proactively invests in our system to meet the highest standards, allowing us to consistently exceed our customers' natural gas needs. We have a long history of partnership with the power providers that serve our territory and are proud of the impactful initiatives we have helped spearhead over the course of our relationships. For more than five years, we've been especially focused on identifying and developing high quality industrial sites, with an emphasis on those with existing robust energy infrastructure already in place.

The biggest challenges have been finding tracts of land with minimal landowners willing to sell and no fatal flaws. Despite these hurdles, our successes have led to more project activity in areas that are traditionally overlooked, while also providing motivation and confidence for local leaders to pursue other community development initiatives they wouldn't have normally attempted.

Tennessee Valley Authority: Supporting economic and community development through jobs and investment is fundamental to TVA’s mission. The commitment to growth across the seven-state region is stronger than ever. Not only is TVA open for business, but it is also developing new solutions to accelerate growth. As the electric provider of choice, TVA is focused on providing the best products and electric services to its customers while mitigating and managing risk.

TVA is developing additional program options and resiliency solutions to assist in enabling and accelerating growth while maintaining a commitment to TVA system reliability for those already served.

TVA has experienced unprecedented expansion into the region, growing at about 3 times the national average. To meet this growth, TVA is aggressively investing in generation — solar, gas, energy storage, and nuclear — and working with industry and local power companies on demand response efforts and expanded energy efficiency programs.

One of our first priorities is investing in our current assets to ensure they are operating as effectively and efficiently as possible — that we're getting every megawatt we can. Current plans call for TVA to invest more than $15 billion in new generation over the next three years (2028) to meet our region's growth.

TVA is currently building more than 3,800 of MWs of new generation that includes solar, energy storage, combustion turbines and combined-cycle natural gas.

TVA is investing $1.5 in energy efficiency and demand response programs over the next 5 years to help homeowners and businesses save money on their power bills, especially in the hot summer and cold winter months, through energy efficiency incentives and demand response programs that help consumers lower their energy use.

TVA maintains one of the largest, most diverse and cleanest generation systems in the nation. The company is committed to maintaining the diversity of its system as it works to meet rising customer expectations, electrification and economic growth across the region.

Sustained success only comes through partnerships. Working hand-in-hand with its state, regional and local economic development agencies, communities, and local power company partners and leaders is key to TVA’s collective success. Initiatives that highlight that collaboration include:

TVA’s 2024 Integrated Resources Plan: The IRP process allows stakeholders to review the planning information and shape the analysis and outcomes based on their feedback.

Valley Pathways Study: Working closely with the Baker Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville, as well as stakeholders from around the region, the Valley Pathways Study will look at all sectors of the economy, not just utilities, and analyze ways the region can achieve a net zero economy.

Valley Vision 2035: Valley Vision 2035 is a joint effort with local power companies, federal customers, customer associations and TVA to develop a collective vision for how to evolve the region's public power model to continue to provide value to customers in the future energy marketplace. We are collaborating with local power companies and industry on creative ways to support economic growth by developing additional energy efficiency and demand response programs.

Economic development is at the core of who TVA is. It is one of the 3 E’s (energy, environment, economic development), the pillars on which TVA's mission is based. TVA exists to ensure the vitality of the communities of the Tennessee Valley region, and attracting new industry, businesses and jobs to the region is core to that mission. That's why we are working with stakeholders, including state and local economic development officials and potential prospects on new electric load management programs.

TVA’s unwavering commitment to economic development is and will always be a key part of its mission, just as it has been for the past 90 years.