For $10 million a year, Tennessee Valley deserves better than TVA CEO Jeff Lyash 

Tennessee Valley Authority CEO Jeff Lyash took home a lofty $10.5 million last year, 26 times more than the U.S. president’s salary. 

And what did the 10 million people living in the Tennessee Valley get for their $10.5 million? Lyash is on track to open eight new costly gas plants and has deepened the region’s reliance on fossil fuels, consigning us to a future of more dirty air, asthma attacks, higher cancer rates, power blackouts and rising utility bills. 

In recent years, our country’s largest federal utility has abandoned its founding mission to improve people’s quality of life by providing clean, cheap energy to the seven southeastern states it serves. 

Under Lyash’s leadership, TVA has expanded its fossil fuel fleet, approved its first rate hike in four years and imposed rolling blackouts for the first time in its 90-year history, undermining federal commitments to transition off fossil fuels and advance environmental justice.

But at last TVA’s dismal track record — and Lyash’s outrageous salary — are getting the attention of the board, and Congress.

In March the U.S. House passed a bipartisan bill, sponsored by Tennessee Reps. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, and Tim Burchett, R-Knoxville, to reinstate the requirement that TVA disclose its management structure and executive salaries.

Months earlier the TVA board voted 6-3 to deny Lyash a raise (though it did give him an annual bonus). In denying the raise, Wade White said it was time to “overhaul” TVA’s compensation structure and Bobby Klein rightly called top executives’ pay “out of line with the public power model.”

Two-thirds of Lyash’s pay comes from bonuses based on TVA’s ability to achieve certain goals, including improved reliability and availability of coal and gas plants. TVA has no performance metrics for renewable energy sources, decarbonization, system resilience or equity. 

This archaic compensation structure is designed to reward leadership for investing in expensive, increasingly volatile fossil fuels. 

We’re facing a fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, with intensifying climate disasters that threaten the reliability of a centralized power model and, not incidentally, life on Earth. In the Tennessee Valley and across the country, rising energy burdens and climate catastrophes disproportionately burden communities of color and low-income neighborhoods.

Reforming the bonus structure is an important step toward bringing TVA back to its founding public service mission and dumping the fossil fuel status quo. A new Center for Biological Diversity report, Perverse Pay, shows the board how to do just that.

The executive compensation plan — and specifically Lyash’s salary — should be directly tied to how quickly the massive utility moves toward a just transition to a renewable, distributed and resilient energy system. 

How did renewables fare during Winter Storm Elliott

That should include a resiliency metric based on the grid’s ability to withstand and recover from extreme weather, like winter storms and heat waves. 

Winter Storm Elliott in 2022 was a wake-up call for the region. TVA’s coal and gas plants failed, leaving families without life-saving power when they needed it most. A recent report shows Tennessee risks more electricity blackouts because of high demand on the power grid.

To protect its customers, TVA needs to invest in resilient energy alternatives, including back-up storage, microgrids and distributed energy resources like rooftop solar and batteries. 

Lyash’s pay should also depend on reducing energy costs for families. That means preventing utility disconnections, especially for at-risk customers, such as the elderly, children, pregnant and postpartum people and people who are ill or living with a disability.

Families in the TVA region spend a greater share of their monthly income on utility bills than people in other parts of the country. TVA and its local power company contractors keep disconnection data secret, so it’s impossible to know how many people in the region have had their power shut off because they couldn’t pay their bills. But across the country utility companies cut power to millions of families who can’t keep up with surging prices. 

It’s time to demand more from the highest paid (by a long shot) federal employee and from the TVA board. 

It appears that board members are beginning to flex their muscles and put customers first. They’ll find broad public support if they use their significant power to revamp TVA’s bonus structure so it facilitates the urgently needed renewable energy transition.

If Lyash can’t meet this mark, the board should fire him.