Ratepayers would save money if TVA paid the penalty - estimated at $410 million a year by 2020 - rather than meet a goal of finding 15 percent new energy sources, said U.S. Sen Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.
"Tennessee is already on the honor roll of states producing carbon-free electricity," Alexander said. "We're 16th."
That's due to nuclear power and hydropower dams, he said, which don't produce carbon that adds to global warming.
While about 64 percent of TVA's energy comes from coal, 29 percent is from nuclear and 6 percent from hydropower. An assortment, including natural gas, provides the rest. The EPA ranks TVA as the country's fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide.
The agency's alternative green energy program - of which a wind farm on Buffalo Mountain in East Tennessee is a large part - provides less than one half of 1 percent, and customers have to pay extra to support it.
Senator touts biomass
Alexander said that converting biomass - woody materials and switchgrass - is a more promising alternative to reduce the need to build more coal-based power plants.
Gil Melear-Hough with Southern Alliance for Clean Energy counters that wind is already a workable solution, while biomass offers future potential.
Alexander does agree with Melear-Hough on at least one point, saying: "The place where TVA and other utilities could make the most strides would be in conservation and efficiency."
"Tennesseans have among the lowest residential electricity rates in the country, but we use more electricity per household than any other state in the nation," he said. "TVA needs to create incentives for households to use less electricity."
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