In the summer of 2019, District 19 Metro Councilmember Freddie O’Connell introduced a suite of green energy bills he framed as a “green New Deal” for Nashville. The bills, which were unanimously approved by the council, put Nashville on track to transition to using 100 percent renewable energy, make Metro’s vehicle fleet 100 percent electric and adopt new green building standards for Metro buildings.
A little more than a year later, Mayor John Cooper’s office has made two announcements that bring the city closer to the future those bills envisioned.
The first is the mayor’s signature of legislation updating Metro’s building codes and energy standards, which hadn’t been changed since 2012. The bill advanced by the administration had 15 co-sponsors on the council.
“Our homes — just like Nashville itself — require investments and modernized standards to operate more efficiently and more cost-effectively,” Cooper said in an announcement from his office. “When those improvements not only lower home energy costs, but also reduce the city’s carbon footprint and further protect homeowners, it makes even more sense to adopt them.”
O’Connell, who notes that District 17 Councilmember Colby Sledge largely drove the council conversation on building codes, says the updates are a big deal.
“My expectation is that what you’re going to see going forward after 2020 as Nashville continues to grow is that new buildings are going to be both more durable and more cost-effective for anybody who owns them and/or lives in them,” O’Connell says.
In announcing the new standards, the mayor’s office emphasized that “lower-income residents are more vulnerable to higher utility costs that result from inefficient building standards.”
A second announcement days later detailed a partnership with Nashville Electric Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Vanderbilt University to construct 100 megawatts of utility-scale solar power. That project will put Metro more than one-third of the way toward being sourced with 100 percent renewable energy, according to the mayor’s office — ahead of the schedule created by O’Connell’s 2019 legislation. It will also allow Vanderbilt to reach its own 100 percent renewable-energy goal.
In the meantime, the 100 megawatts of solar power will produce “the clean-electricity equivalent of carbon emissions from powering over 11,000 homes, or removing more than 14,000 cars from the road, every year for the 20-year term” of the agreement.
O’Connell says the TVA has not historically been leading the way when it comes to development of renewable energy resources, although the federally owned corporation does have a modest green energy portfolio. He points to the influx of large technology companies looking to build data facilities in Tennessee — and power them with solar farms — as a major factor in the TVA’s increased cooperation with solar energy efforts.
Put together, the two initiatives — updated building codes and investment in solar power — begin to change Nashville’s energy use from both sides.
“We hope in some ways that we’re reducing demand for fossil fuels, coal in particular,” says O’Connell. “But we also hope that we’re changing the way that we produce energy in the first place. So investments in solar are things that local communities can do.”
