The president tweeted that TVA needed to “give serious consideration to all factors before voting to close viable power plants, like Paradise #3 in Kentucky.”
Phil McCausland reports for NBC News
The Tennessee Valley Authority announced Thursday that it would close two coal plants, including one that buys its fuel from one of Donald Trump’s campaign contributors, despite public pressure from the president to keep it open.
In a 5-2 vote, the public utility’s board of directors chose to shutter Kentucky’s Paradise Fossil plant in 2020 and Tennessee’s Bull Run plant in 2023. The Kentucky plant buys much of its fuel from Murray Energy, which is owned by Robert Murray, a generous supporter of Trump. The two dissenting votes came from Trump administration appointees.
The board met Thursday to discuss the potential shuttering of the plants that are 50 years old after a series of TVA assessments deemed them to be obsolescent and wasteful of energy. The independent federal agency said earlier in the week that the facilities produced a steady, inflexible amount of power and could not bend to “the increased volatility in energy consumption” of its customer base.
“Making decisions that impact employees and communities is difficult as we fulfill our commitment to keep power rates as low as possible,” TVA President and CEO Bill Johnson said. “We value the contributions of the employees of Paradise and Bull Run, and we will be working directly with them and local communities to ease the transition as much as possible.”
The decision came even though Republican politicians, including Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, urged the TVA to keep the plants open.
The president entered the fray over the potential closure Monday, stating on Twitter that the TVA needed to “give serious consideration to all factors before voting to close viable power plants, like Paradise #3 in Kentucky.”
Data compiled by the Energy Information Administration shows that the Paradise Fossil plant, outside Drakesboro, Kentucky, has trucked in millions of tons of coal since at least 2013 from the nearby Paradise #9 Mine, which is owned and operated by Murray Energy.
Robert Murray, chief executive of Murray Energy Corp., speaks during an interview in his office at the Crandall Canyon Mine, in Huntington, Utah on Aug. 22, 2007.Jae C. Hong / AP file
Murray is a prolific donor to Republican causes through the Murray Energy Corporation Political Action Committee. The group donated almost $350,000 in the 2016 election, including $100,000 to the Trump Victory Super PAC, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Murray Energy said in an email earlier this week that its chairman “did not have any contact with President Trump or anyone in his administration on this issue.”
In a statement Thursday, Murray said that his company is “extremely disappointed in the TVA board decision.”
“We have 690 employees in the vicinity of the plant,” he said. “Further, every coal mining job, according to university studies, results in up to 11 additional jobs in our communities. This is up to 7,500 jobs in West Kentucky that could be affected.”
Neither he nor the company immediately clarified whether those employees faced losing their jobs because of the decision.
The White House declined to comment Thursday.
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