KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) -- Former UT quarterback Heath Shuler knows he'll win few points with some colleagues in Congress when he touts window stripping, and improving the insulation in your home.

"It's not sexy," says the now second-term U.S. Representative
from western North Carolina, "But if every person in the United States was given $5,00 to retro-fit their homes--we could take 300 coal-burning plants away."

"We want solar," says Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee's senior senator in Washington DC, "but the smart way to do something is the fast way to do something."

Alexander believes the fastest way to develop Tennessee's "renewable" energy production is to keep plowing the millions of stimulus dollars into private enterprise, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

"But it's gonna be years before it's cost competitive," he says.

"We need to focus on conservation first, nuclear power second, and afer that--electric cars. That would do the most, in this region, to have clean electricity."

TVA generates roughly 60 percent of its electricity from coal.

"If we figure out the carbon we'll be energy-independent," Sen. Alexander says.

"We'll have low-cost electricity, we'll have plenty of jobs, we can

"There's no such thing as clean coal, we all know that," counters Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

"This (TVA's Congressional Caucus Forum) was a hatchet job on wind-technology first and foremost."

Smith claims Sen. Alexander and Rep. Shuler sought to blow the weaknesses of wind power out of proportion by displaying a picture of a wind turbine appearing to tower over Neyland Stadium.

"They (wind turbines) produce lots of power," Smith says.

"But they need to be properly deployed."

The director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory argues such
deployment would be difficult in the Tennessee Valley.

" The simple lack of capacity makes generating large amounts of
power from wind a rather impractical option," says Dr. Thom Mason.

"You'd still nee the nuclear plant because the wind blows only
18 percent of the time, "Sen. Alexander says.

"Some of it at night, when we don't need it. "

Smith remains undeterred.

"This hearing is nothing more than his (Alexander and Shuler's)
attempt to justify what is going to be wrong vote, when he says the technology is not ready."