Heidi Alexander: “in a few minutes, we will be voting on the President's nomination of John Ryder, of Memphis, to be a member of the Board…”

“in a few minutes, we will be voting on the President's nomination of John Ryder, of Memphis, to be a member of the Board of the Tennessee Valley Authority. To those of us in the seven State region that the TVA serves, it is a very important institution. Its job is to provide large amounts of reliable, low-cost electricity, which is the basis for how we live and how we work. It has a lot to do with our ability to attract jobs. Its job is to provide that energy in a clean way so we can see our mountains and so we meet the emissions standards in our metropolitan areas that allow us to attract and grow more jobs. The TVA is fulfilling its mission very well. It is heading toward a position in which it will be about 40-percent nuclear in its production of electricity, about 20 percent in natural gas, and about 20 percent in coal or a little less than that. It will have pollution control equipment on all of its coal plants. Most of the rest is hydroelectric power, and a little bit is renewable. In short, it has one of the cleanest portfolios in the country, and it is continuing to do that and is producing a lot of low-cost, reliable electricity.…”