TVA board names operations chief Don Moul next CEO for 'seamless' transition

Yahoo

31-03-2025

The Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors selected Chief Operating Officer Don Moul as its next CEO, Knox News has learned.
Moul joined TVA in 2021 after nearly four decades in the utility industry, including two stints as a chief nuclear officer and senior nuclear reactor operator. He will become TVA's fourth CEO on April 9 in what he described as a "seamless" transition in an interview with Knox News.
The announcement came after Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee asserted the board was conducting an "inside job" to find the next CEO. The senators called for an interim CEO to ensure TVA's proposed small modular reactors would come online fast enough for President Donald Trump to be christened "America's Nuclear President."
The TVA board selects new CEOs, not the president or the U.S. Senate. Trump fired a board member on March 27, after the board offered Moul the job, though Moul said he believes the termination and his hiring are "not directly tied whatsoever."
Trump has not said publicly why his administration fired board member Michelle Moore of Virginia, and the White House has not responded to a request for comment.
Jeff Lyash, who came to TVA as its chief executive in 2019, announced in January he would retire this year once the board selected a successor.
'TVA needs a steady hand right now,' Moul told Knox News. 'We're in a period of growth like we've not seen before, making one of the largest capital investments in our history, and we also have to make sure we have reliable, resilient power for the next generation of American jobs."
Moul is the second TVA chief operating officer to lead the Knoxville-based utility after the board named Tom Kilgore its first CEO in 2006, the year after Congress reformed TVA and created the position. The board went outside the agency to hire TVA's second and third CEOs, Bill Johnson and Lyash.
The TVA board conducted an internal and external search for a new CEO, Moul said. He underwent a series of interviews with board members and experts, in addition to psychological and leadership evaluations, before the board offered him the job March 25.
As chief operating officer, Moul has overseen TVA's power plants and transmission grid, which supplies electricity to 10 million people across seven Southeast states. He was appointed to Gov. Bill Lee's Nuclear Energy Advisory Council in 2023.
Congress created TVA in 1933 to bring electricity and jobs to the rural Tennessee Valley. It's now the nation's largest public power provider, though it is self-funded through electricity sales and does not receive taxpayer funding for its operations.
The CEO position is emblematic of TVA's status as a quasi-public corporation. It is the highest paid federal job at $10.5 million in total compensation last year, but the salary is paid by ratepayers rather than taxpayers, and is lower than CEO compensation at similarly sized private utilities.
'It is an incredibly big job, and it took discussions with my family and making sure that I was truly prepared and ready to take on this incredible responsibility,' Moul said. 'I am humbled and honored to be given this opportunity.'
Moul, 60, was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He lives in Knoxville with his wife and has two sons, one of whom works at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and one of whom lives in Chicago. He pronounces his last name like "mall."
'We are burying some deep roots into East Tennessee. We love living here. The place is so welcoming and we're thrilled to be here,' Moul said.
Moul served in various management roles at Ohio-based electric utility FirstEnergy Corporation from 2004 to 2019, including as chief nuclear officer and head of fossil operations and environmental compliance, as well as president of Ohio Edison and Penn Power, two of the utility's operating companies.
Before joining TVA, Moul was chief nuclear officer for NextEra Energy for two years, overseeing seven reactors at five plants in Iowa, Florida, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. He earned a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering from Penn State and an MBA from the University of Notre Dame.
Moul will lead TVA as it spends $16 billion on new power plants and transmission upgrades to meet rising demand from population growth and industrial expansion.
The utility plans to submit a construction application this year for what could be the nation's first small modular reactors at the Clinch River Nuclear Site in Oak Ridge. Small modular reactors have potential to be built faster and more frugally than traditional large nuclear plants, and they can be located flexibly depending on power needs.
In an op-ed in POWER Magazine on March 20, Sens. Blackburn and Hagerty called for faster development of the new nuclear technology to secure President Trump's legacy as 'America's Nuclear President.
They wrote that the TVA board "lacks the talent, experience and gravitas" to oversee development of the first small modular reactor and called for the Trump administration to help install an interim CEO.
All five members of the board, down from six after last week's termination, were nominated by President Biden and confirmed to five-year terms by the U.S. Senate. The board voted last year to increase funding for the small modular reactor project from $200 million to $350 million. TVA has applied for $800 million for the project made available by the Biden administration.
'I was surprised, like many others,' Moul said about reading the op-ed. 'I would welcome any opportunity to sit down with any member of the (Tennessee Valley) delegation, and certainly Senators Hagerty and Blackburn, to dive a little deeper into what their concerns are and have a deeper conversation about it.'
The offices of Blackburn and Hagerty have either not responded to or declined multiple requests from Knox News for comment by phone and email.
TVA is pursuing an "all-of-the-above" approach to new electricity generation, supported mostly by large natural gas plants it is building and solar energy it plans to buy from other companies.
It generated about half its energy in 2024 from carbon-free sources: three nuclear plants, 29 hydroelectric dams and purchased solar and wind power.
The board set a goal for the utility to cut operational costs by $500 million, an effort now run through the "Enterprise Transformation Office." The program began under Moul's watch as chief operating officer and he told Knox News he will continue cutting costs as CEO.
'We are really trying to drive closer to a billion dollars of sustainable savings, and what this really does is starts to unlock our full potential to meet the needs for the future,' Moul said, describing the effort as similar to the budget-cutting efforts run by the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Though TVA is exempt from many DOGE federal cuts, it offered its employees a voluntary buyout with five days of pay for every year worked. It is in the "final stages" of evaluating the voluntary buyouts, and it's too early to say if there will be other workforce reductions, Moul said.
Daniel Dassow is a growth and development reporter focused on technology and energy. Email: [e-mail]. Signal: @danieldassow.24.
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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: TVA board names operations chief Don Moul next CEO in internal hire