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Bloomberg News: A first-of-its-kind “clean coal” power plant that utility owner Southern Co. spent years constructing in Mississippi may end up burning no coal at all — and instead just run like a natural gas generator. After years of delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns, Mississippi regulators on Wednesday called on Southern to […]
Seeker.com: The first attempt at building a “clean coal” power plant that captures its carbon dioxide before being burned is struggling to get up and running in Mississippi, as the Trump administration plans to sharply cut back funding for the technology. Mississippi Power’s Kemper power plant is designed to allow the continued use of cheap […]
Jackson (Miss.) Clarion Ledger: Mississippi Power Co. is again delaying completion for its $7.3 billion Kemper County power plant. The subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co. says it still can’t reliably run parts of the plant, including units that convert lignite coal into gas. Southern said in a stock filing Monday that it’s pushing back completion […]
Dow Jones: Several public pension funds and a foundation issued an open letter Monday to Southern Co. criticizing executive compensation at the Georgia-based utility and urging shareholders to vote against two board members because of the issue. The investors, including the California State Teachers’ Retirement System and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, argue executives are being […]
From InsideSource.com: Originally, the project was budgeted for $2.8 billion. Today, the plant is still not fully operational, and construction costs are nearly $6.9 billion. Some of that cost was borne by taxpayers. Mississippi Power received a $270 million grant from the Department of Energy and $133 million in tax credits when the project began. […]
If the “clean coal” integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology promoted at home and abroad by the U.S. utility industry sounds too good to be true, it’s because it is. That’s why Moody’s Investors Services warned the other day that it might downgrade the credit of Mississippi Power Company because of the declining competitiveness of […]
Russell Gold for the Wall Street Journal: Southern Co. said it has nearly completed a first-of-its-kind “clean coal” power plant, though a new analysis suggests it might not make sense to burn coal in it. After taking nearly seven years and $7.1 billion to build, the Kemper County, Miss., facility, which can burn coal and […]
Mary Perez for the (Gulport, Miss.) SunHerald: Moody’s Investors Service placed Mississippi Power Company’s ratings on review for another downgrade after the company last week announced a ninth extension for placing the now $7 billion Kemper energy facility into service using lignite. About $800 million of debt securities are affected by the possible downgrade, including […]
Steve Wilson for Mississippi Watchdog: The Kemper Project clean coal power plant has been generating electricity using natural gas since 2014, but now the facility is generating something else for its owner — lawsuits. The Southern Company is embroiled in three lawsuits active in courts in Georgia and Mississippi over alleged fraud in the protracted […]
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IEEFA Update: Will Southern Company Refund Mississippi Ratepayers for Failed $7.5 Billion Kemper ‘Clean Coal’ Experiment?
Red Flags Ignored in Long Run-up to Power Plant Debacle
Call it what you will: fiasco, debacle, calamity, misadventure. But not a surprise. Georgia-based Southern Company and its regulators in Mississippi were warned years ago that the experimental and now infamous “clean coal” Kemper power plant project was a shot in the dark. They kept at it anyway, pushing the price tag to $7.5 billion, […]