The continuation of a change in approach on energy policy has resulted in the firing of Michelle Moore from the Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors. Moore was fired March 27th, but the filing was done the next day with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. While President Trump also fired broad members in his first team, this one seems directly connected to an op-ed co-written by Tennessee senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty that specifically targeted the TVA board and called on the administration to replace them. Moore was initially nominated by President Biden in 2021. Her term wasn’t set to end until May 18, 2026.
The Trump administration’s approach on energy puts its emphasis on “unleashing” of U.S. fossil fuel production and combustion. Moore leads a nonprofit organization that champions solar energy. While that was never cited as a reason for the firing, it continues the switch in attitude and approach regarding energy from the Biden to the Trump administrations. The Biden policy focused on clean energy technologies, of which solar is prominent along with wind. In the past the board was widely viewed as a non-partisan entity, but board members are nominated and confirmed by the Senate.
“I have been a business and energy executive for more than 25 years, and in that time, serving the TVA, its people, and all the people of the Tennessee Valley as a member of the TVA Board has been among my most fulfilling work,” Moore said in an emailed statement to the Knoxville News-Sentinel and Knox News. “As I look ahead, I see that the importance of the public power model and TVA’s leadership will only grow as the region continues to lead the nation in economic development and quality of life and towards a nuclear renaissance and a flourishing future.”This termination is also part of the Trump administration’s efforts at governmental reshaping, with TVA being a part of that move. TVA generates electricity for 10 million people in seven states across the Southeast.Moore was nominated by President Biden alongside Beth Geer and Bobby Klein in spring 2021. They were renominated in January 2022. The U.S. Senate confirmed all six Biden nominees in December 2022, and their membership on the board became official in January 2023. Those five board members – a group that also includes Chair Joe Ritch, Bill Renick and Wade White – are the only members left after the terms of three Trump nominees expired. The TVA board needs five of its nine members to have a quorum and conduct the business of guiding the federal utility. It is the board’s responsibility to select a new CEO after Jeff Lyash announced in January he would leave the position by the end of the year. Before Moore was fired, the board hired a “tiny headhunting firm” to help select a new CEO from inside the utility, according to Blackburn and Hagerty’s op-ed in POWER Magazine on March 20. They suggested that an “inside job” for the next CEO would lead TVA to miss the chance to select a “top-quality leader from the outside.” They called on the Trump administration to help appoint an interim CEO.
Senators Blackburn and Hagerty wrote the board was moving too slowly to develop small modular reactors, a new nuclear technology that would be the first of its kind in the U.S. The senators said TVA, with the only early site permit for the reactors, could cement Trump’s legacy as “America’s Nuclear President” if they moved faster on the complex technology.
The board has approved $350 million for the project at the Clinch River Site in Oak Ridge and its members have repeatedly supported the effort. TVA plans to submit a construction permit for the 300-megawatt reactors to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission this year.
Moore, from Midlothian, Virginia, was the only board member from outside the Tennessee Valley. She is the author of “Rural Renaissance: Revitalizing America’s Hometowns Through Clean Power” and CEO of Groundswell, a nonprofit aimed at expanding community solar energy projects, reducing energy costs and increasing economic opportunity in five states. She previously led sustainability and infrastructure projects for the Obama administration, according to a press release announcing her term on the TVA board. At the utility’s quarterly board meetings, she often voiced support for speeding up the pace of solar energy expansion and other clean energy technologies.
Critics of the move included Gaby Sarri-Tobar, senior energy justice campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. She said Moore’s termination is “ludicrous and leaves our country’s largest federal utility in a precarious position. Ten million people rely on TVA to keep the lights on, utility bills low, and for good-paying jobs. Trump’s reckless and politically targeted move will cripple the utility’s chances to secure a safe, resilient and affordable energy future for families and workers in the Valley.”.TVA differs from other federal agencies in that its operations are funded by billions of dollars in revenue from sales of electricity. It has its own CEO, who has been classified as the highest paid federal employee, with a total annual compensation of $10.5 million in 2024.
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