Jurisdiction Index / US — Tennessee (TVA federal power / MLGW & local distributors; non-RTO)
US — Tennessee (TVA federal power / MLGW & local distributors; non-RTO)
JCI composite · as of · methodology v0
US — Tennessee (TVA federal power / MLGW & local distributors; non-RTO) scores 66/100 on the Compute Institute Jurisdiction Competitiveness Index (Tier 2, Competitive), ranking #9 of 39 rated jurisdictions with a positive outlook, as of September 7, 2026 under methodology v0. Its strongest dimension is Stability & Execution Risk at 7.5/10; its weakest is Regulatory & AI Policy Environment at 5.4/10. 14 of 22 sub-factors are scored on E1–E2 evidence (data confidence B). The positive outlook is driven by 8 forward-looking signals (+2.50 net points, E3–E4 evidence): grid headroom (E4), energy mix & expandability (E4), price trajectory & exposure (E3), cost certainty / contractability (E3), observed construction velocity (E4), committed capital (E4), ecosystem (E4) and political/policy continuity (E4).
Dimension breakdown
Seven dimensions, each 0–10, weighted per methodology v0. JCI = Σ(dimension × weight) × 10.
Power Availability & Deliverability
Power Cost
Speed to Build
Regulatory & AI Policy Environment
Fiscal & Incentives
Capital & Ecosystem Depth
Stability & Execution Risk
Outlook drivers — Positive (+2.50 net points)
Forward-looking E3–E4 signals. They move the outlook only — never the base score.
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Grid headroom +0.00 pts as of
“TVA's Board adopted the 2026 IRP on 20 Aug 2026 finding that 'between now and 2040, the IRP suggests that the region will need 11 to 32 gigawatts of additional generation capacity,' against a system whose winter peak record is 35,319 MW (22 Jan 2025, 8 a.m. CT, system temperature 11F, surpassing 34,577 MW set 17 Jan 2024) - i.e. incremental need equals roughly one third to nine tenths of today's peak, driven by data centers, advanced manufacturing and population growth. As a non-RTO federal utility TVA controls allocation directly rather than clearing a capacity market, so headroom is rationed by contract and by the new Capacity Commitment Charge on new or expanding loads above 5 MW effective 1 Oct 2026, not by queue position.”
Source: Blue Ridge Mountain EMC (TVA local power company), 'TVA Sets New Power Demand Record During Winter Freeze' (23 Jan 2025) (www.brmemc.com)
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Energy mix & expandability +0.45 pts as of
“TVA reported 'approximately 6,200 megawatts of new firm, dispatchable generation under construction or being evaluated for potential construction' as of FY25 close (30 Sep 2025), having 'added nearly 1,900 megawatts of new gas units at Paradise in Kentucky, Colbert in Alabama, and Johnsonville in Tennessee'; 'forty-seven percent of TVA's power supply was carbon-free in fiscal year 2025' on 167,612 GWh of sales. Expandability is real but gas-weighted and gated by turbine supply chains; the Clinch River BWRX-300 SMR advanced on 1 Jul 2026 to NRC staff recommending that the agency 'issue a construction permit to the Tennessee Valley Authority,' but the permit had not been issued as of that report.”
Source: American Nuclear Society, Nuclear Newswire, 'Clinch River construction permit recommendation follows safety evaluation' (1 Jul 2026) (www.ans.org)
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Price trajectory & exposure +0.00 pts as of
“TVA's FY2027 budget commits 'more than $13 billion planned through FY29 to maintain reliability and expand capacity, including more than $1 billion annually to maintain and strengthen TVA's existing generation fleet and transmission system' plus 'construction of 4,120 megawatts of new TVA-owned capacity and 3,000 megawatts currently under evaluation' - capex that must be recovered in rates. Data centers specifically absorb a Capacity Commitment Charge on new or expanding loads above 5 MW from 1 Oct 2026, raising all-in average billing about 10% phased over three consecutive fiscal years, and a gas-heavy build-out leaves TVA's monthly fuel-cost recovery exposed to gas prices.”
Source: Unite.AI, 'TVA Board Creates Data Center Rate to Shield Households From AI Power Costs' (20 Aug 2026) (www.unite.ai)
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Cost certainty / contractability -0.09 pts as of
“TVA is a federal corporation that sets its own wholesale rates with no state PUC review and no retail choice or bilateral PPA market, and on 20 Aug 2026 its Board created a new data-center rate class: effective 1 Oct 2026, 'new or expanding data center loads above 5 megawatts fall under a Capacity Commitment Charge ... designed to recover the incremental capacity costs,' with an all-in average billing impact of approximately 10% 'phased in over three consecutive fiscal years'; the Board separately approved new policy for load greater than 100 MW. A developer cannot contract around the tariff, and the tariff itself changed mid-cycle; this is the weakest link in Tennessee's otherwise low-cost power story.”
Source: Unite.AI, 'TVA Board Creates Data Center Rate to Shield Households From AI Power Costs' (20 Aug 2026) (www.unite.ai)
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Observed construction velocity +0.31 pts as of
“LOW CONFIDENCE - not verified against our internal tracked-campus database. Third-party tracking (Cleanview, updated Sep 2026) counts 22 Tennessee data centers, 17 'operating' at 2,474 MW and 5 planned at 452 MW, with xAI's Colossus 1 (300 MW, operational 2025) as the marquee fast build. Two corrections to that basis: Cleanview places Colossus 2 (1,563 MW) inside the operating bucket while itself labelling it 'Year Operational: 2026', and although the Colossus 2 compute campus is in Whitehaven, Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee, its power 'has relied heavily on a behind-the-meter gas-turbine plant in Southaven, Mississippi', so it is not Tennessee grid load. Net of Colossus 2, Tennessee's verifiable operating base is roughly 911 MW across 16 facilities, and no completion-date series was retrievable - so the single fast build carries the score rather than a demonstrated multi-project cadence.”
Source: Wikipedia, 'Colossus (data center)' - Colossus 2 siting and power (en.wikipedia.org)
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Committed capital +0.75 pts as of
“LOW CONFIDENCE — no Tennessee-specific tracked-campus capital figure could be verified against our internal database. The best retrievable proxies: TVA reports helping attract more than $6.6 billion of capital investment across its seven-state region in FY25, creating over 9,000 new jobs and retaining 43,000; and third-party tracking puts Tennessee at 2,474 MW operating plus 452 MW planned data-center capacity as of Sep 2026. Neither is a clean TN data-center capital total, so the score is held at mid-range rather than inflated by the xAI headline.”
Source: TVA Investor Relations — 'TVA Reports Fiscal Year 2025 Financial Results' (13 Nov 2025), regional capital-attraction figure (s205.q4cdn.com)
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Ecosystem +0.19 pts as of
“Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Frontier - 'delivered in 2021 and open for early operations in 2022', at 1.6 EF peak against Summit's 200 PF, i.e. roughly eight times Summit - anchors a genuine HPC engineering and operations talent pool at Oak Ridge, and Memphis is a top-tier logistics hub. But the commercial colocation base is thin (Cleanview lists 17 operating facilities statewide, and net of the mis-bucketed Colossus 2 the verifiable operating base is roughly 911 MW) with no dense multi-hyperscaler campus cluster of the NoVa/Dallas/Phoenix type, so third-party supply chain and operator depth lag the power and tax story.”
Source: Cleanview - Data Centers in Tennessee (last updated September 2026) (cleanview.co)
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Political/policy continuity +0.90 pts as of
“The 114th General Assembly (Jan 2025 - Jan 2027) holds Republican veto-proof supermajorities of 27-6 in the Senate and 75-24 in the House, so the pro-business direction is structurally locked in. The offset: Gov. Bill Lee is term-limited with an open-seat gubernatorial election on 3 Nov 2026, and TVA's governing board is federally appointed rather than state-controlled, so the single most important institution for a data center in Tennessee turns over on Washington's political cycle, not Nashville's.”
Source: Wikipedia, '114th Tennessee General Assembly' (en.wikipedia.org)
Sub-factor scores and sources
Every base-scored input below carries E1–E2 evidence: a justification, an evidence-level grade, and a link to the underlying source document.
Power Availability & Deliverability — 6.6/10 (weight 20%)
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Sub-factor
|
Score
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Justification
|
Evidence
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Source
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grid headroom 40% of dimension | — | Excluded — no E1–E2 evidence available; weaker evidence cannot enter a base score. | — | — |
| Time-to-power 35% of dimension | 6.5 /10 | MLGW's own public disclosure records xAI moving from site acquisition (former Electrolux plant, Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park, mid-2024) to 150 MW of firm TVA/MLGW grid service in roughly 12 months — 8 MW from a pre-existing substation plus 142 MW from a newly built substation... as of | Memphis Light, Gas & Water — 'MLGW is providing this update to the public regarding utility support for xAI' (5 May 2025) www.mlgw.com | |
| Energy mix & expandability 15% of dimension | — | Excluded — no E1–E2 evidence available; weaker evidence cannot enter a base score. | — | — |
| Water availability 10% of dimension | 7 /10 | Tennessee imposes no water-allocation permit on data centers: TDEC states its permits 'are not specific to data centers,' and a withdrawal of 10,000 gallons/day or more requires only REGISTRATION with the Division of Water Resources, which 'does not, by itself, authorize or limit... as of | Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation — 'Data Centers' policy page www.tn.gov |
Power Cost — 7.5/10 (weight 12.5%)
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Sub-factor
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Score
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Justification
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Evidence
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Source
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Industrial electricity price 60% of dimension | 7.5 /10 | EIA Electric Power Monthly puts Tennessee's average retail industrial price at 6.87 cents/kWh for June 2026 versus a 9.17 cents/kWh U.S. average — roughly 25% below national, among the cheapest large-load power in the United States, before the qualified-data-center 1.5% electrici... as of | EIA Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A www.eia.gov | |
| Price trajectory & exposure 25% of dimension | — | Excluded — no E1–E2 evidence available; weaker evidence cannot enter a base score. | — | — |
| Cost certainty / contractability 15% of dimension | — | Excluded — no E1–E2 evidence available; weaker evidence cannot enter a base score. | — | — |
Speed to Build — 6.4/10 (weight 17.5%)
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Sub-factor
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Score
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Justification
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Evidence
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Source
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Permitting regime 40% of dimension | 7 /10 | TDEC confirms there is no data-center-specific permit and it 'does not approve a data center project as a whole': air sources under 5 tons/year of regulated pollutants are exempt or insignificant, PSD construction permits trigger only at 250 tons/year, NPDES construction coverage... as of | Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation — 'Data Centers' policy page www.tn.gov | |
| Observed construction velocity 35% of dimension | — | Excluded — no E1–E2 evidence available; weaker evidence cannot enter a base score. | — | — |
| Labor & supply capacity 25% of dimension | 5.5 /10 | BLS state employment data for July 2026 (preliminary) show Tennessee construction employment at 165.4 thousand — DOWN 0.1% year over year — against 3,385.1 thousand total nonfarm jobs and a 3.4% unemployment rate. A flat-to-shrinking construction workforce at near-full employment... as of | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Economy at a Glance: Tennessee (July 2026 preliminary) www.bls.gov |
Regulatory & AI Policy Environment — 5.4/10 (weight 12.5%)
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Sub-factor
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Score
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Justification
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Evidence
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Source
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI-specific law in force 35% of dimension | 6 /10 | Tennessee's AI statutes remain narrow and none touches compute, model training or data-center operation. The ELVIS Act (Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act), announced by Gov. Bill Lee on 10 Jan 2024, added 'voice' to the state's right-of-publicity law to stop unauthor... as of | Tennessee General Assembly, Bill Information for SB 1580 (114th GA) - Public Chapter 647 wapp.capitol.tn.gov | |
| DC-specific regulation 35% of dimension | 5.5 /10 | Tennessee now has a data-center-specific statute: HB 1847, enacted as Public Chapter 961 after passing the House 76-14 (1 present not voting) on 21 Apr 2026 and the Senate 28-0 (2 present not voting) on 22 Apr 2026, which 'generally prohibit[s] a municipality or electric utility... as of | Tennessee General Assembly, Bill Information for HB 1847 (114th GA) - Public Chapter 961 wapp.capitol.tn.gov | |
| Regulatory predictability 30% of dimension | 4.5 /10 | Tennessee-only record: the Shelby County Health Department did not issue Air Permit No. 01156-01PC to CTC Property LLC (an xAI affiliate, Southwest Memphis) until 2 Jul 2025, by which point the operator 'was already operating at least 22 unpermitted gas turbines, including at lea... as of | NAACP and Young, Gifted & Green, Appeal of Air Permit No. 01156-01PC to the Memphis and Shelby County Air Pollution Control Board (16 Jul 2025) cdn.arstechnica.net |
Fiscal & Incentives — 7.3/10 (weight 10%)
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Sub-factor
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Score
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Justification
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Evidence
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Source
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enacted incentives 40% of dimension | 7.5 /10 | The qualified-data-center exemption is statutory and by-right, not negotiated: over a period of no more than three years (extendable to four by the ECD commissioner for good cause) the operator must invest more than $100,000,000 in real or tangible property or software and create... as of | Tennessee Department of Revenue, Application for Qualified Data Center Sales and Use Tax Exemption (RV-F1325001) www.tn.gov | |
| Headline tax burden 40% of dimension | 7.5 /10 | For a qualified data center Tennessee cuts the sales-tax rate on ELECTRICITY to 1.5% (Tenn. Code Ann. § 67-6-206(c)) and exempts outright the purchase of computers, networks, software, peripherals, repair parts and service contracts, backup power infrastructure and cooling equipm... as of | Tennessee Department of Revenue, Application for Qualified Data Center Sales and Use Tax Exemption (RV-F1325001) www.tn.gov | |
| Incentive durability 20% of dimension | 6.5 /10 | The exemption itself is embedded in Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 67-6-102/206 and has survived repeatedly, but the 114th General Assembly demonstrated in a single session that it will re-cut data-center economics: HB 1847 passed 76-14 in the House and 28-0 in the Senate in April 2026 and b... as of | Tennessee General Assembly, Bill Information for HB 1847 (114th GA) - Public Chapter 961 wapp.capitol.tn.gov |
Capital & Ecosystem Depth — 5.5/10 (weight 12.5%)
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Sub-factor
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Score
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Justification
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Evidence
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Source
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Committed capital 40% of dimension | — | Excluded — no E1–E2 evidence available; weaker evidence cannot enter a base score. | — | — |
| Ecosystem 30% of dimension | — | Excluded — no E1–E2 evidence available; weaker evidence cannot enter a base score. | — | — |
| Sovereign/anchor capital availability 30% of dimension | 5.5 /10 | Tennessee has no sovereign wealth fund, but TVA is a wholly federally owned corporation whose FY2027 budget commits more than $13 billion through fiscal 2029 to reliability and capacity — including over $1 billion a year on the existing fleet and construction of 4,120 MW of new T... as of | TVA press release, 'TVA Board Protects Consumers, Strengthens Reliability Amid Rising Power Demand' (20 Aug 2026) www.prnewswire.com |
Stability & Execution Risk — 7.5/10 (weight 15%)
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Sub-factor
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Score
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Justification
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Evidence
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Source
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Political/policy continuity 40% of dimension | — | Excluded — no E1–E2 evidence available; weaker evidence cannot enter a base score. | — | — |
| Currency, transfer & convertibility 35% of dimension | 9 /10 | Tennessee transacts in U.S. dollars, legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes and dues under 31 U.S.C. § 5103, with no capital controls, no repatriation restrictions and no convertibility risk. This is the global reference case; 9.0 rather than 10 leaves headroom only fo... as of | Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System — FAQ on legal tender (31 U.S.C. 5103) www.federalreserve.gov | |
| Physical & geopolitical risk 25% of dimension | 5.5 /10 | USGS puts the chance of a magnitude 6.0+ earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone at 25-40% over the next 50 years and a repeat of the 1811-12 sequence at 7-10%, on an inferred ~500-year recurrence interval, and names Memphis explicitly among the communities whose structures are... as of | U.S. Geological Survey — New Madrid Seismic Zone www.usgs.gov |
Signals
Recent ingested source documents linked to this jurisdiction via extracted claims or triage mentions, newest first.
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· Area Development — News · relevance 0.00
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· Construction Dive - main · relevance 0.00
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· ENR - main · relevance 0.00
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· Area Development — News · relevance 0.00
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· Data Center Dynamics · relevance 0.70
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· Area Development — News · relevance 0.20
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· Site Selection · relevance 0.20
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· Area Development — News · relevance 0.20
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· Area Development — News · relevance 0.00
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· Site Selection · relevance 0.20
Scores are reproducible from the frozen inputs snapshot recorded at computation time (2026-09-07T05:00:03+00:00). See the full methodology for rubrics, weights, and the evidence ladder.