SACE Energy Efficiency Director Forest Bradley-Wright contributed to this post
On October 2nd 2023, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) announced that it was relaunching energy efficiency rebate programs for customers, five years after eliminating all of its previous efficiency rebate offerings. This marks the beginning of what we hope will be a new and better chapter for efficiency in the Tennessee Valley, with lower customer energy bills and less justification for construction of new fossil fuel power plants.
Historical Context
TVA was once a leader among Southeastern utilities in how it evaluated efficiency resources to meet future energy demand through a process called integrated resource planning (IRP). In both 2011 and 2015, TVA’s IRPs included significant increases in energy efficiency. But actual performance fell far short of plans. Then in 2018 the utility discontinued all of its customer efficiency rebate programs, leaving only minimal funding for efficiency upgrades in low-income homes.
The following year, TVA’s 2019 IRP (their most recent) essentially eliminated energy efficiency as a resource. The utility’s stated rationale was that Department of Energy codes and standards had reduced electricity demand, thereby making utility efficiency programs unnecessary. This position is inconsistent with the majority of major peer utilities that continue to prioritize efficiency in resource planning, recognizing energy efficiency as a least-cost energy resource.
Source: Southern Alliance for Clean Energy “Energy Efficiency in the Southeast, 2019 Annual Report,” p. 11.
Efficiency Performance Comparison
Since 2017, TVA’s already modest annual efficiency performance has fallen 95%, putting the utility at the bottom of national rankings. By 2021, TVA’s efficiency performance was just 0.01% of its annual retail electric sales. To put this in context, the national average that year was 0.68%…in other words 68 times higher.
Underinvestment in energy efficiency drives up electricity consumption, and in 2021 residential customers in Tennessee used 34% more electricity than the national average – the second highest in the country (behind Louisiana).
Overconsumption, in turn, leads to unaffordable energy bills and increases utility system vulnerability to widespread power outages during severe weather, like those experienced during Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022. Even compared to other utilities in the Southeast (which as a group trail far behind utilities in other regions), TVA has consistently ranked near or at the bottom.
Source: “Energy Efficiency in the Southeast” report, published March 2023, p. 13
It is an age old adage that when you are on the bottom, the only way to go is up – which certainly was the case when TVA recently announced its commitment to reinvesting in efficiency.
TVA’s $1.5 Billion Announcement – What We Currently Know
On October 2nd, 2023 (National Energy Efficiency Day!), TVA announced that it will spend $1.5 billion on energy efficiency and demand response over the next four years. This is a significant step in the right direction, both for helping to cut customer energy bills and reduce the need to build new fossil fuel power plants to meet growing electricity demand.
On TVA’s webpage, many new incentive programs are now available for residential and business customers. These include, for example, rebates for home heating and air conditioning, insulation, and air sealing. Similar measures qualify for rebates for businesses, along with incentives for commercial refrigeration, lighting systems, and industrial processes.
TVA currently estimates that energy efficiency will be able to meet 30-40% of its forecasted load growth. Over the next year TVA expects to save 319 GWh with energy efficiency, rising to 500 GWh a year by 2026. This equates to roughly 0.21% annual savings next year rising to 0.32% starting in 2026. This is quite a jump from 2021, when TVA achieved just 0.01% savings, though it is still less than a third of the national average for utility energy efficiency savings.
Notably, if TVA continued to increase its efficiency savings up to the national average, it is feasible that efficiency could actually meet the vast majority of TVA’s projected future load growth – without the need to build new fossil fuel power plants.
Frustrated by TVA on again off again commitment to efficiency and wanting to verify some of their claims given a track record half-truths and misinformation we requested TVA respond in writing to a series of questions. With other large utilities in the region these programs would be shared and debated in front of a state regulatory commission giving interested parties a clear understanding of the utilities programs, TVA being a self-regulated monopoly has no review process. We were able to receive the questions and were generally favorable to their responses linked here and here.
Next year, TVA will file its next integrated resource plan. If it allows energy efficiency to once again compete against potential new power plant additions, it is very possible that efficiency will prove to be the less expensive resource – thereby justifying even more than the $1.5 billion in efficiency spending TVA has committed to publicly.
Looking Forward
This appears to be the start of a new and better chapter for energy efficiency at TVA, one we hope will live up to the promise of the moment. There is no denying that for the first time in many years TVA is a utility to watch for energy efficiency growth in the Southeast, which is a truly refreshing change of pace for a major utility in our region!
The post Rising Up from the Bottom, TVA’s $1.5 Billion Efficiency Announcement appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Rising Up from the Bottom, TVA’s $1.5 Billion Efficiency Announcement
Renewable Energy
As Europe Shuns Chinese Turbines and Components, Who Will Fill the Gap?
Weather Guard Lightning Tech

As Europe Shuns Chinese Turbines and Components, Who Will Fill the Gap?
While most of Europe has spent most of this year itemizing reasons it cannot, should not, and will not use Chinese wind turbines or components, accusations and arm-twisting tactics have garnered most of the attention.
But we invite you to consider a future – maybe just five, or ten years from now?- in which those same countries and companies are eagerly awaiting orders from wind turbine manufacturing facilities in… India.
What?!
You know that the country has a lot of installed wind.
You may think – and many in the industry would agree – that India’s blade manufacturers are a few revs behind blade-makers elsewhere in the world. But the country is newly committed to manufacturing and it’s busy installing more – provided that it’s made in India, with Indian technology, by Indian workers.
Of course, similar domestic-focused policy currents are running through European countries – where wind OEMs are almost inarguably a decade ahead of Indian manufacturers. But there’s an important reason why we say, “watch India” in wind turbine manufacturing.
It’s because you might learn something.
If you follow The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, you probably heard this discussion a few weeks ago. It wasn’t the headline story – we try to highlight as many major news items and trends that we can, and follow up as credible information becomes available. India’s quiet moves to strengthen its own renewable energy industries didn’t grab the headlines. But it comprised a good bit of our panelists’ discussion.
With India’s expanding manufacturing capacity, and Suzlon’s strategic offerings for the European market (Blue Sky), there are reasons for European developers to take a closer look at Indian manufacturers.
If Europe continues to squelch deals with Chinese manufacturers due to data security issues, India is a relatively obvious candidate to fill the void, for several reasons:
- The country has depth and breadth in R&D: India (Suzlon, specifically) has a track record of involvement and relationships across the continent, as it operates research and development centers in Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
- Indian service providers have reach: Inox and Adoni Wind operate multiple wind turbine manufacturing plants and wind farms throughout several Indian states, and Apraava Energy has been commissioning wind projects, working with multiple OEMs, for more than 16 years.
- The country’s energy sector has size: Tata Power is estimated to be worth about US$16 billion and employs 22,000 people.
And major manufacturers from other countries have had a strong presence in the country for years:
- GE Vernova has turbine blade and nacelle manufacturing operations and multiple tech/R&D centers in India;
- Vestas has a R&D technology center in Chennai; and
- China’s SANY Wind has had assembly facilities in India since 2017, and in 2024, it signed a licensing agreement with JSW allowing SANY to manufacture blades and generators for JSW – enabling JSW Neo Energy to produce wind turbine generators and major components in-country.
So while there is hard data suggesting that India is already a global hub for wind turbines, sometimes the real strength comes from soft skills. Like sharing information.
We’ve noticed that Indian manufactures aren’t stingy with information. They share what they learn in the field and on the shop floor, so that the whole industry can move faster to solve problems. That bodes well for the industry overall, and particularly well for companies who figure out how to solve problems that some manufacturers aren’t even ready to admit to having.
We’ll be watching India with a great deal of interest in the coming months. Subscribe to The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast and follow along with us.
We’re not financial analysts. We’re engineers who watch the wind industry very closely. This is what we’ve noticed, and we thought it was worth sharing.
Where do you think you’ll be looking for solutions, components, and service providers in the next few years or the next decade? Tell us what you think. We’d love to hear from you.
As Europe Shuns Chinese Turbines and Components, Who Will Fill the Gap?
Renewable Energy
When You Write for Idiots, You Can Get Away with Anything
To the author of the meme here:
“Either” refers to two choices; “any” refers to three or more.
More importantly, it’s amazing how shamelessly the ultra-right wing exaggerates. The left side of the Democratic party would like to see the United States look like social democracies in places like Scandinavia. Having government programs that benefit the common person, e.g., Social Security, public schools, emergency relief, libraries, environmental responsibility, etc., does not equate to Stalinism.
Renewable Energy
Are Muslims “Dangerous?”
Some of my old prep school chums from the Class of 1973 convene via Zoom approximately every six weeks for a 90-minute discussion of current events, science, and anything else that sounds interesting.
Our professions range from medicine, law, finance, and business management. All from highly ranked colleges. Over 50% hold doctorate degrees.
Here’s something I find fascinating about the group: it includes one right-wing conservative. I don’t mean a Reaganite; I mean a Trump supporter. This guy is incapable of any thought that doesn’t come directly from Nexsmax.
It’s almost eerie how closely he toes the line of the far-right. Yesterday he echoed the Newsmax talking point and told the group that all Muslims holding public office are “very dangerous” and should be removed.
Now, the rest of us are sitting there, dumbfounded at this idea, unwilling waste our breath on this racist and utterly preposterous concept.
All this raises the question: How are our political viewpoints formed? How much of this is genetics? Epigenetics? Early childhood experiences? How do take a boy from among the best environments and turn him into someone who struggles to understand the most basic principles on which our country was founded?
https://www.2greenenergy.com/2026/11/09/principles-country-was-founded/
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