Southern Alliance for Clean Energy

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) promotes clean energy choices that create global warming solutions and also protect human health. Founded in 1985, SACE operates in five southern states: Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The purpose of this two-year grant is to support ongoing efforts by SACE, in coordination with Earthjustice, Environmental Integrity Project and Southern Environmental Law Center, to advocate for the retirement of between 30000 and 5000 megawatts of coal fired power plants operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) no later than 2017. TVA is the nation's largest federal power agency, serving seven Southeastern states and providing power to nine million people. The agency's 11 coal-fired power plants provide 2/3 of it power and emitted 73 millions tons of carbon dioxide in 2009. TVA ranks third in the country for its CO2 emissions (4% of industry total), and the Southeast is home to three of the nation's four top emitters.

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) promotes responsible energy choices that create global warming solutions and ensure clean, safe and healthy communities throughout the Southeastern United States. As part of its mission, SACE advocates for energy efficiency, particularly within the utility sector. To promote efficiency, as well as renewables and distributed power options, it is important to redefine how utilities and its regulators define how various energy system options are valued. One standard way to due these valuations is through determining the "avoided cost" associated with alternative approaches, specifically renewable power, efficiency and distributed generation. How avoided costs are calculated affects the viability and marketability of these alternatives, yet there is not standard approach to determining avoided costs. Particularly in the Southeast, avoided cost calculations are skewed to make tradition fossil choices, such as coal-fired generation, more economically viable than cleaner alternatives. This grant will fund research regarding the potential legal and economic avenues associated with federal laws -- specifically the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act of 1978 (PURPA). Its goal is to examine if a more uniform standard for avoided costs.

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy promotes clean energy choices that create global warming solutions and protect human health. This renewal of the two-year grant would support ongoing efforts by the Alliance, in coordination with Earthjustice, the Environmental Integrity Project, the Sierra Club, and the Southern Environmental Law Center, to advocate for the retirement of 14,000 megawatts of coal-fired power plants operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Southern Company by 2017.