Energy
WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9) today applauded House passage of his bill, the TVA Salary Transparency Act, that he introduced with Representative Tim Burchett (TN-2). This bill aims to reinstate and modernize the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) annual reporting requirements to Congress concerning its management structure and the compensation of its top executives and managers.
WASHINGTON -- Congressmen Steve Cohen (TN-9) and Tim Burchett (TN-2) today reintroduced a measure ensuring the public has access to information about the salaries of Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) employees making more than $123,041 annually, or the maximum basic pay rate of a General Schedule Grade 15 (GS-15) Federal employee.
WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9) and Senator Edward J. Markey (MA) led a letter to the leadership of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) with seven House and two Senate colleagues urging the federally owned electric utility agency to reconsider its focus on expanding gas-fired power generation and instead encourage and plan for renewable energy, energy efficiency, and distributed energy sources in its final Integrated Resource Plan (IRP).
MEMPHIS – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9), a senior member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, today announced two Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) Program grants from the Federal Railroad Administration totaling $26,269,987. The first, for $19,843,062, is for the conversion of eight Watco Company diesel locomotives to battery-electric, zero-emission locomotives. Watco operates the Memphis Dock Street Marine Terminal on Presidents Island. Congressman Cohen submitted a letter of support for the project.
MEMPHIS – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9) today announced that Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW) will receive $11,423,844 for the permanent repair of the electrical distribution system damaged by the straight-line wind storms of July 18-21, 2023. The figure represents the 75 percent federal share of the $15,231,792 in actual damage.
WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9) today cheered the announcement that Elon Musk’s xAI company will be building the largest and most powerful supercomputer in history – the Gigafactory of Compute -- in the former Electrolux oven factory in Southwest Memphis, and made the following statement:
WASHINGTON --- Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9) today announced that the State of Tennessee will receive $2,484,530 from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program. The funding for the program came from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) that only Congressman Cohen in the current Tennessee Congressional Delegation voted for.
MEMPHIS – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9) today announced that the University of Memphis will receive a grant of $750,000 from the National Science Foundation for Phase One of its Center for Electrified and Automated Trucking (CEAT) under the direction of Civil Engineering Professor Sabya Mishra.
Congressman Cohen made the following statement:
WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9), a longtime proponent of using the Clean Air Act to limit the pollution driving climate change, today applauded the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) suite of new rules governing fossil fuel-fired power plants. He was particularly pleased to see a final rule requiring the safe management of coal ash like that produced by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).
WASHINGTON -- Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9) and Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety, and today urged Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Chair Joe Ritch and President Jeffrey Lyash not to move forward with a new 1,500 megawatt gas plant and 122-mile pipeline based on an incomplete and insufficient environmental impact statement, which has been called out directly by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its inadequacy.