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TVA Official Addresses Council Membership
By Robert Lee Long
DeSoto Times Today
The energy supply to meet industry's future needs is plentiful, according to a top Tennessee Valley Authority official.
However, conservation and diversification are needed to preserve precious energy resources.
TVA Executive Vice President of Customer Resources Kenneth Breeden was the keynote speaker at the first quarterly luncheon of the DeSoto County Economic Development Council Friday, March 23.
"No matter what the environment deals us, we'll stand in good stead with industry," Breeden told a crowd of about 250 inside the Whispering Woods Hotel and Convention Center.
He said by 2008, 42 percent of energy emissions will come from nuclear and hydroelectric power, as opposed to natural gas.
"Reliability and stability of price is needed for industry," Breeden said. "Electricity is the engine that drives the economy. As a utility, you don't want to serve an industry off gas prices. There's too much unreliability in price."
Breeden said TVA's energy portfolio is diversified to the extent customers have a reliable supply of energy.
Breeden said natural gas is definitely needed during high peak times.
He said natural gas flow as disrupted during hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.
"Nobody knows what gas prices are going to do next year," Breeden said. "Nobody predicted Katrina."
He said industry officials were told in the 1990s that the nation's natural gas supplies were going to "dry up."
That didn't happen, Breeden said. "Natural gas companies went up on their prices instead of going down," he said. "As an industry, we have been schizophrenic as to what has been the right fuel source."
Breeden said nuclear energy production is on the ascent once again.
An idle unit at the Brown's Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in Athens, Ala. is scheduled to go on line soon. In May 2002 the TVA Board voted to return Browns Ferry Unit 1 to service. When completed, it will generate up to 1,200 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply about 650,000 homes. The project is scheduled for completion in 2007. Unit1 has been idle since 1985.
He said the decision to locate Toyota's new plant near Tupelo, coupled with new industrial expansion in the Lowndes County Golden Triangle area in Columbus is indicative that the upper region served by TVA remains viably competitive.
Breeden said DeSoto County's economic future, and its power supply, remains bright.
"The secret is out," he said. "This is the place to come."