The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the nation’s largest public power supplier, have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to power at least two major federal facilities with 100% clean energy. The deal advances the Biden administration’s goal of powering all federal facilities with carbon-pollution-free electricity (CFE) by 2030.
Under the MOU, the TVA will work to provide the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., with 100% locally supplied CFE by 2030. The agreement also potentially covers other federal facilities in TVA’s service territory, which includes Tennessee and portions of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia.
“At DOE, we are on the cutting edge of researching and developing innovative clean energy technologies, and it makes perfect sense that we partner with TVA to accelerate their deployment,” said U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy David M. Turk.
The partnership supports President Joe Biden’s December 2021 Executive Order 14057, which tasked the federal government with “leading by example” and leveraging its “scale and procurement power” to tackle the climate crisis with 100% CFE and net-zero emissions goals.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration announced similar MOUs between Xcel Energy and the DOE to provide CFE to facilities in Colorado and the U.S. General Services Administration for facilities in the Midwestern states of Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
In July, DOE announced the Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative, an effort to repurpose parts of DOE-owned lands—portions of which were previously used in the nation’s nuclear weapons program—into the sites of clean-energy generation. Initially the initiative will be focused on DOE facilities in Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Washington.
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