TVA has been named by Site Selection magazine among the top 10 utilities in the nation for economic development for its 2017 scorecard: $8.3 billion in corporate investment and 70,000 new jobs for the Tennessee Valley.

For most power companies, economic development is a sensible, symbiotic relationship with new businesses—they do what they can to keep businesses going and in return they get demand for plenty of electrons flowing, according to the August edition of Site Selector magazine. It’s just good for the bottom line, which in turn keeps investors happy.

For TVA—a public power company—that relationship goes a little bit deeper. “TVA was founded in 1933 to bring jobs and investment to the Valley,” explains John Bradley, Senior Vice President of Economic Development. “It’s ingrained in our mission of service, and it underscores much of what we do to make our region a great place to live and work. We don’t do it for investors—we do it for the people of the Valley.”

The company’s efforts pay off year over year—once again, for the 13th straight year, Site Selection has recognized TVA as one of the Top 10 Utilities in Economic Development.

In its September 2018 edition, Site Selection noted a recent Wall Street Journal article that cited two Valley cities—Huntsville, Ala., and Clarksville, Tenn.—as among the nations hottest high-tech hot spots due to the combination of abundant clean and affordable power and low cost of living.

It also recognized perhaps the biggest news of 2017: The announcement of a $1.6 billion Toyota-Mazda joint venture in Huntsville. That, along with the announcement of a Nokian Tyre facility in Dayton, Tenn., contributed to a total of $8.3 billion in corporate investment for the year, and 70,000 new jobs for the region.

TVA’s economic development activities are manifold, and the Site Selection took note of the breadth: a new solar farm in Memphis, new transmission lines and switching stations near the prospering Golden Triangle in Mississippi, a new Aerospace and Defense Target Market initiative, a newly formed Composites Coalition and three ongoing powerhouse product development programs: the TVA Megasites Program, the InvestPrep™ Program and New Legacy Sites.

That’s a lot of work for the TVA Economic Development team, but it continues to pay big dividends. “We’re seeing continued success in 2018,” Bradley says. “In the first six months alone, we attracted or retained 42,000 jobs and secured $8.5 billion in capital investment through our economic development efforts with state and local partners throughout our seven state service region.”

It’s gratifying, Bradley says, to see such tangible results. And with numbers like that—set to only climb over the course of the year—it’s a good bet that TVA will grace Site Selector’s list again next year. Lucky 14.

TVA Site Selector

Need help finding just the right home for your company within TVA’s seven-state region? Let our Site Selector suite of tools help. With Site Selector, you’ll be able to search 2,000 available job sites in our GIS database, get key demographic information about subregions inside the Valley, access an assortment of maps and learn much more about the benefits TVA Economic Development offers.

Why wait? Get started today.