Are We Moving Fast Enough to Address Climate Change?

EPISODE 2: Former Vice President Al Gore and Jeff Lyash, President and CEO of the Tennessee Valley Authority, join Bredesen and Haslam to clear the air on climate change.

To talk climate change, former governors Bredesen and Haslam turned to two fellow Tennesseans: former Vice President Al Gore and Jeff Lyash, the president and CEO of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the nation’s largest public utility.

download episode 2 transcript

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“A really great environmentalist”

First, some background. We can’t talk about climate change without talking about Howard Baker’s leadership on environmental issues, a point that Vice President Gore highlighted in earnest during his conversation with Governors Bredesen and Haslam.

“The environment and climate itself used to be a fully bipartisan issue,” he reminded Bredesen and Haslam. “It was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, in spite of all his other problems, he enacted the EPA and the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. And Teddy Roosevelt, another Republican, was the greatest environmental president ever. And Howard Baker, in whose name we are doing this podcast, was the co-sponsor and deciding person on the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and was really a great environmentalist.”

Hear Howard Baker talk about the Clean Air Act here.

“We ought to stop forcing the taxpayers to subsidize the destruction of the future of humanity.”

This episode was recorded before Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which included the largest investment in combatting climate change in history. Bredesen and Haslam re-recorded a brief introduction that acknowledges the new legislation, as well as several places where the recommendations of their guests overlap with parts of the bill. Gore’s response focused on fossil fuel subsidies when asked what “low-hanging fruit” he would take on first to address climate change. “We ought to stop forcing the taxpayers to subsidize the destruction of the future of humanity,” he told Governors Bredesen and Haslam.

The Inflation Reduction Act includes several tax credits and other financial incentives designed to make clean energy more accessible to consumers.

“I don’t think it helps anybody to be unrealistic.”

As the head of the largest public utility, Lyash deals in the practical implications of climate change as he makes daily decisions about energy use and sourcing. TVA provides electricity to nearly 10 million people who expect their lights to come on every morning – and to pay a reasonable price for that service in return. “Electricity is one of the most important elements in people’s lives,” Lyash said, adding that we are likely to consume twice as much energy in the form of electricity by 2050.

Lyash explained that TVA’s current energy mix is about 60 percent carbon-free (solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear combined) and 40 percent that produces some form of carbon (natural gas and coal-fired plants), noting their goal of retiring all of their coal by 2035. As TVA continues to transition its energy mix, Lyash believes that keeping four key elements of its service in balance – affordability, reliability, resiliency, and sustainability – will be essential to success.

But what does he say to advocates, policymakers, and others who believe TVA isn’t moving fast enough?

“My answer is I’d love to go farther, faster. I have no desire to restrain progress toward that low-carbon future. As a matter of fact, we’re investing hundreds of million dollars of research and development in the projects to do just that,” Lyash said. “The other side of the coin is I don’t think it helps anybody to be unrealistic… Because to say, we can do something we don’t have line of sight on is to mislead people and take the pressure off innovation at the same time.”

“Nuclear’s got to be a part of this”

One area where Gore and Lyash shared some common optimism was nuclear.

“As I think about that transition we have to undergo, we’re going to build as much renewables as we can, but without carbon capture; low-carbon fuels; large-scale, long-duration energy storage; and new nuclear, I just can’t make the math work,” Lyash said. “If we’re really committed to affordable, reliable, resilient, and clean, nuclear’s got to be a part of this. And that means preserving the existing nuclear fleet and building new nuclear.”

Gore was on board with at least the first part of that plan, preserving the existing fleet. “I think that a lot of the reactors that they’ve been talking about closing early, I think that’s a mistake,” he told Bredesen and Haslam. “Where you can feel pretty confident about the safety of them, we ought to extend the lifetimes of these reactors, for sure.” As for new nuclear? Gore had some questions but concluded, “If we can really get some new designs that are smaller, modular, cheaper, safer, than I’m all for it.”