TENNESSEE

Tennessee, land of country music and smoky mountains, is home to over 7 million people over 42,144 square miles. Tennessee’s geography is extremely unique, with the Appalachian and Great Smoky Mountains by the eastern North Carolinian border and a relatively flat half by the Mississippi River to the west on the Missouri and Arkansas border. Tennessee is sandwiched between the milder-climates of states like Kentucky and Virginia and the Deep South climate of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Tennessee has 10 official state songs. The first is “My Homeland, Tennessee,” adopted in 1925, but the most famous one is “Rocky Top,” adopted in 1982. 

CLIMATE IMPACTS

Natural cycles and sulfates in the air prevented much of Tennessee from warming during the last century. Sulfates are air pollutants that reflect sunlight back into space, preventing the greenhouse effect. 

• Now, those sulfate emissions are declining and Tennessee is warming. 
• Annual precipitation in Tennessee has increased by 5% since the first half of the 20th century. 
• However, rising temperatures cause increased evaporation, so although rainfall is expected to continue to rise, the total amount of water running into rivers or recharging ground water each year is likely to decline 2.5-5%. 
• Droughts are likely to be more severe because periods without rain will be longer, and very hot days will be more frequent.
• When rainfall increases but periods without rain get longer, flooding is inevitable. Since 1958, the amount of precipitation falling during heavy rainstorms alone has increased by a full 27% in the Southeast, and the trend is likely to continue. 
• Severe droughts and more hot days reduce farm yields, especially in the western half of Tennessee. These hot days will particularly impact corn and soybeans, two major cash crops. Warmer temperatures are also likely to reduce the productivity of dairy and other cattle farms.
• Another less obvious problem with droughts and rainstorms is damage to Tennessee’s river trade. During droughts, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Corps of Engineers release water from dams to keep the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers navigable. These rivers support $35 billion in annual shipping. The agencies try to keep channels at least eleven feet deep, because lower river levels can force barges to carry smaller loads, which increases transportation costs.

ENERGY 

Tennessee ranks among the top one-third of the states in terms of energy consumption and near the median per capita. 

• The transportation sector alone accounts for 30% of the state’s energy usage. 
• Manufacturing takes slightly under another 30% of the state’s consumption, and most of the rest of the state’s energy goes to heating and cooling in the residential sector.
• The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) owns more than 90% of Tennessee’s electricity generating capacity, including 29 hydroelectric dams, 17 natural-gas fired plants, 4 coal-fired power plants, 3 nuclear power plants, and 1 pumped-storage hydroelectric plant.
• TVA also has one wind farm and several small solar farms. 
• In 2023, nuclear power provided 48%of the state’s total electricity generation, landing Tennessee in the top ten states in the nation for total nuclear generation. 
• Coal and natural gas each accounted for about 20%of the state’s generation. Coal has declined since it generated the majority of electricity in 2011, as over 3000 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity have retired since 2014, with another 4800 megawatts scheduled to retire by 2031. 
• About 14%of the state’s electricity was generated from renewables in 2023, mostly hydropower. 
• With hydropower accounting for 86%of the state’s renewable generation, Tennessee is ranked sixth in the nation for hydropower generation. 
• Solar energy accounted for 10%of the state’s renewable generation, while biomass was 4%. 

CLEAN ENERGY GOALS

• Tennessee does not have a renewable portfolio standard or a voluntary renewable energy target.
• The state additionally does not offer any net metering, but has some rebates, loan programs and tax incentive initiatives for renewables. 
• According to the State Climate Policy Dashboard, Tennessee has not established any climate advisory bodies, nor enacted an environmental justice mapping tool, just transition plan, cumulative impact assessment, social cost of carbon calculation, net metering, energy storage targets, or zero-emission vehicle mandates.
• The few policies the state has at least partially enacted are EV charging infrastructure plans, property assessed clean energy, and commercial and residential energy codes. 
• Tennessee released its first statewide climate plan in 2024 under the EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program. Its Priority Climate Action Plan, called the Tennessee Volunteer Emission Reduction Strategy, was submitted to the EPA in March 2024, but did not land any funding. Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville also produced their own Priority Climate Action Plans for the EPA’s program. 

LEGISLATION 

Some minor action was taken prior to the current administration. 

• In 2009, Tennessee commissioned an assessment of the impacts of climate change on the state(to be fair, it was federally mandated by Congress). 
• The city of Memphis did highlight climate change adaptation in its GreenPrint area study in 2015, which spells out a vision for the greater Memphis region over the next 25 years. 

Tennessee’s current government leaves something to be desired in terms of climate change legislation. Governor Bill Lee took his oath of office in 2019 and was quoted at the time, when asked if he believed that climate change was real, “There are a lot of studies that have had a lot of different outcomes.”  

• In 2023, Tennessee’s General Assembly passed several bills protecting fossil fuel interests and developers: natural gas is now legally defined as “clean energy” despite the fossil fuel being responsible for the worst climate pollution sites on Earth; cities were preempted from banning gas stoves; penalties for protesting oil and gas pipelines were increased; cities were preempted from enacting better building codes than what Nashville currently has in place. More here.