Dive Brief:
- The Senate voted 86-12 to confirm the nominations of Virginia Lodge and Ronald Walter to seats on the Tennessee Valley Authority's board of directors, The Hill reports.
- Lodge is currently CEO of FSI Inc., a position she took on in 2012. Prior to that, she served as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Services from 2003 to 2011. Walter is currently the President and General Manager of WREG-TV.
- President Obama nominated Lodge and Walter in August, and they were approved by the Senate in a flurry of year-end activity.
Dive Insight:
The Tennessee Valley Authority is a government-owned electric company set up during the New Deal to provide low cost electricity to southern states.
At a hearing on their nominations last month, Senator Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., noted that "in recent years the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has identified safety problems at TVA’s nuclear power plants. Potential safety concerns cannot be ignored ... I look forward to hearing from you about your vision for the future of TVA."
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., took the opportunity to address Obama's clean energy policies.
"The impact of these rules on the consumer cost and the reliability of our electric system are two of the key things that TVA needs to evaluate," Inhofe said. "TVA needs to evaluate how its specific region will be affected so that the people who live there know how EPA’s policies are going to affect them. This is especially true given your exposure to nuclear, which EPA claims its rules will help while industry assures us they will not."
