The Tennessee Valley Authority’s quarterly board meeting in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, opened with a triumphant video homage to the agency’s work during the winter storm that battered the eastern U.S. in late January. Energy had come through, yet again, to defeat extreme cold. The montage credited this to the utility’s “coal workhorses,” then noted that nuclear plants provided “uninterrupted power” and “hydro responded instantly.” The list ended there, despite years of promises that the agency would bolster renewables and battery storage. The message was clear: Solar had been unceremoniously dropped from the mix, and coal, which the agency had been phasing out, was back.

What the video hinted at the board made official. Its seven members voted unanimously to drop renewable energy as a priority, end diversity programs and grant two of the agency’s four remaining coal plants reprieves from planned closure. The decision followed the seating of four members selected by President Donald Trump, breaking months of paralysis that followed the termination of three members appointed by President Joe Biden.

These moves come despite the agency’s 2025 Integrated Resource Plan, which called for retiring the two facilities because of Kingston’s “high cost and challenged condition” and Cumberland’s “lack of flexibility.” The Kingston plant was also the site of a devastating 2010 coal ash disaster, the largest industrial spill in U.S. history.