The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is the biggest and most important public utility in the country, generating power for 10 million people across seven states in the Southeast. 

TVA is winding up for two big swings to deliver dependable, carbon-free power in the long run: new pumped-hydro storage and novel modular nuclear reactors. Both endeavors build on decades of previous experience at the utility. Neither is guaranteed to succeed, but they represent the kind of long-term thinking that TVA is uniquely designed to do.

“This is a perfect sweet spot for a public power entity to take on some of that risk, to try to really get a technology that we need off the ground,” Matt Huber, professor of geography and the environment, says of TVA’s small modular reactor program. ​“They have the resources and the social mission to do that, where private capital wouldn’t.”

Read more in the Canary Media article, “Is the biggest US public utility finally catching up on clean energy?”