Delaney King 

Associate Attorney

Delaney works alongside SELC attorneys in Nashville and our Tennessee partners on the latter’s priorities for the state’s energy sector. The goal is increasing available, renewable energy and lessening reliance on harmful, costly fossil fuels. Delaney also conducts legal research and drafts public comments on a variety of topics relevant to SELC’s work, primarily for the energy and water teams. 

The Tennessee Office collaborates with a wide range of partners and clients pushing for a cleaner and more affordable energy future from the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest government-owned utility. In particular, Delaney is pushing back on TVA’s massive proposed build out of gas infrastructure.

Delaney became inspired to do this work as a high school senior in Hillsborough, N.C., when a speaker told her high school environmental science how “lawyers could help people respond to powerful players destroying the places they loved for the sake of profit,” she said. “SELC’s place-based advocacy using legal tools is the type of approach that made me want to go to law school.”

Her work has made her more proud of her origins, too: “It took me a long time to learn to be proud of being a Southerner. I feel so honored work for SELC because it gives me the opportunity to learn from some of the brightest, most creative environmental attorneys and clients who stay fighting for a healthier South. Their resilience inspires me and makes me feel proud to be from this region.” 

Delaney loves returning home to the Eno River, near her alma mater. “It runs through both my hometown of Hillsborough and Durham, where I went to college, and today it feels like a constant in a rapidly changing region,” she said.

•  J.D., Harvard Law School; managing editor, Harvard Environmental Law Review
•  B.A., Duke University, magna cum laude