Vanderbilt to partner with TVA, NES
authors Staff Reports
Vanderbilt University will partner with the Tennessee Valley Authority and Nashville Electric Service to procure renewable energy on a large enough scale to help mitigate the campus’ greenhouse gas emissions.
University officials have signed a 20-year agreement to support their goal to power the West End campus entirely through renewable energy and become carbon neutral by the year 2050, according to a release. The release does not note the costs affiliated with the initiative, which will draw renewable power from a planned solar farm Nashville-based Silicon Ranch Corp. will build in Bedford County, south of Rutherford County. Silicon Ranch, which was founded by former Gov. Phil Bredesen and several of his close advisors, has been growing quickly in recent years thanks in part to backing by global energy giant Shell.
Vanderbilt is the first customer to partner with a local power company on this type of agreement in the seven-state TVA region, the release notes. It is also the first agreement finalized under the TVA’s new Green Invest program.
An environmental review of the Bedford County location is needed. Upon successful completion of that review, Silicon Ranch will start construction and is targeting fall 2022 for the facility to be operational.
The future solar farm will supply up to 35 megawatts of renewable energy, an amount sufficient to offset about 70 percent of Vanderbilt’s annual indirect greenhouse gas emissions from purchased electricity — the equivalent of nearly 7,000 cars driven for one year or 5,000 homes using electricity for one year, per the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies calculator.
According to the release, Vanderbilt is the first high-profile institution located in the Southeast to claim carbon neutrality and to set a “Net Zero + Resilience” (net positive) goal for on-campus and purchased power.
“Off-site large-scale renewable energy is an integral part of FutureVU, Vanderbilt’s holistic campus planning initiative and the university’s comprehensive long-term sustainability strategy,” Eric Kopstain, the university's vice chancellor for administration, said in the release. “We … hope other institutions follow the example and invest in similar solutions.”