Overview

All of TVA’s environmental work is guided by its Environmental Policy and six Environmental Principles. The Environmental Policy expresses TVA’s commitment to protecting the environmental resources of the Tennessee Valley. It specifies that TVA will continually improve its environmental performance, balance the sustainable development of the Valley’s resources with supplying reliable, affordable power, and sustain those resources through leadership in clean energy innovation and environmental management.

TVA has adopted six Environmental Principles in support of its Environmental Policy. They form the basis for this report on the company’s environmental performance for the years 2004 and 2005*. The principles help provide a framework for understanding the challenges facing TVA as it fulfills its environmental mission, and they underscore the steps TVA is taking to ensure continual improvement in its performance.

The six principles are:

Management Commitment

This principle guides TVA in integrating environmental practices into all of its business operations. In this section, Tom Kilgore, TVA acting chief executive officer, president, and chief operating officer, introduces TVA’s Environmental Management System and discusses key priorities of the previous two years and the challenges facing TVA.

Environmental Protection and Stewardship

TVA manages the competing demands on the Tennessee Valley’s natural resources by optimizing their value to the stakeholders who benefit from those resources. In this section TVA discusses the effects of its new reservoir operations policy, water supply questions, reservoir monitoring activities, and other topics.

Environmental Compliance

TVA continually updates its approaches to complying with evolving environmental laws and regulations. This section includes a discussion of TVA’s activities related to stringent new air-quality rules and other clean-air regulations and its responses to several reportable environmental events that occurred in 2004 or 2005.

Pollution Prevention

No form of power production is without environmental consequences, and TVA works to minimize the effects of its operations on the air, land, and water. Air quality achievements, programs to reduce the demand for electricity, and power generated from renewable sources are among the topics discussed in this section.

Partnerships and Public Involvement

Protecting the natural resources of the Valley is a highly complex task, and TVA relies on its partnerships with other agencies, community groups, and environmental organizations to carry out projects and increase public awareness of conservation goals and methods. This section presents some of the team efforts that help accomplish this important work.

Innovation and Technology Development

In operating with the goal of continuous improvement, TVA carries out research on new ways of reducing the environmental impacts of producing electricity. This section examines research on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, solar lighting for commercial buildings, and other projects.

 

*References to years are to the TVA fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30, unless otherwise noted.