Mississippi “clean” coal plant to run on natural gas – PB/TK
A First-of-Its-Kind Clean Coal Plant May End Up Burning No Coal p By Jim Polson / June 21 2017
A first-of-its-kind “clean coal” power plant that utility owner Southern Co. spent years constructing in Mississippi could end up burning no coal at all — and instead run just like any other natural-gas generator.
After years of delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns, Mississippi regulators on Wednesday called on Southern to work on a deal that would have the Kemper plant fueled only by gas. The state Public Service Commission said in a statement that it’s looking for a solution that eliminates the risk to ratepayers “for unproven technology,” which involved converting coal into gas and capturing emissions.
Settling for gas only at Southern’s Kemper plant threatens to undermine the business rationale for the kind of clean-coal technology that the Trump administration has hailed as a way to save jobs at coal mines. It would mark the end of a very costly venture that has company investors demanding pay cuts for executives. The utility owner is also grappling with its long-delayed, over-budget Vogtle nuclear project in Georgia.
“Clean coal was a very uncertain prospect after all the cost overruns, and difficulty getting the gasifiers too work just makes it worse,” Kit Konolige, a New York-based utilities analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, said by phone Wednesday. “But gas is so cheap it would have been an uphill battle even if this plant had been finished on time and on budget.”
Continue to Bloomberg.com article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-21/a-first-of-its-kind-clean-coal-plant-may-end-up-burning-no-coal
