Eastern Railroad Discussion > Southern Company recommended to pull plug on MS Clean Coal plant

Short blurb from Crain's Atlanta Business Repor/Atlanta Journal-Constitutiont,

Southern Company’s “clean coal” headache worsens
Utility regulators are telling the Atlanta company’s Mississippi unit to pull the plug on its troubled “clean coal” plant and absorb billions in costs. Mississippi Power’s Kemper plant is a first-of-its-kind power plant that was supposed to burn coal more cleanly, but it is years past its planned completion date, billions of dollars over budget, and still not working properly. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Jay

I work with a lot of utility company people, and their unanimous opinion was that this project was a doomed boondoggle from the get go.  It was a way of pretending that coal can be burned cleanly and still maintain its cost advantage vs other fuels.

march_hare Wrote:
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> I work with a lot of utility company people, and
> their unanimous opinion was that this project was
> a doomed boondoggle from the get go.  It was a
> way of pretending that coal can be burned cleanly
> and still maintain its cost advantage vs other
> fuels.

I think coal is on its way out as a fuel, not just because it is dirty, but because other sources of energy are more cost effective. Yes, I know it's a blow to many railroads, not to mention workers in the coal industry, but that's how our economic system works. Utilities, for example, may not care about the environment, but they do care about the bottom line. Here in Northwest Indiana, our local utility is closing one coal-fired plant and part of another. They may eventually build a gas-fired plant.

Exactly. Contrary to the political BS that was thrown around, the previous administration was not what has put coal in the current situation. Not even Trump can turn around the slump in coal. I do agree that we should not be putting in play such a huge reliance on natural gas. Diversity of energy sources is good. Shutting down all the coal and nuke in favor of natural gas is not a great idea. But economics drive the market.

I'm not saying the clean coal plant project wasn't mismanaged, or that money wasn't wasted, but it seems worthwhile to try the concept and see if it could be made to work. If this was some idiotic "green do- gooder" project, they would throw money at it for thirty years, and NEVER admit that it didn't work, only that they didn't have enough time or money to make it work. Just because we apparently don't need coal all that bad as an energy source now doesn't mean we won't some day in the not too distant future. I am REALLY concerned that we are putting all of our eggs in one basket. If you think natural gas is ALWAYS going to be dirt cheap, you are living in fantasy land.

In my [removed] post, I said that Southern Company had already spent billions of its shareholders' money, billions more of federal funding, and even more from Mississippi rate payers.

The technology didn't work after more than 10 years of trying.

Find a new technology, and find somebody to put up cash to see if it works.

I'm a chemist and have been reading about the "clean coal" generation of electricity for over 40 years. Billions of dollars have been invested by the federal government and commercial businesses in the science and engineering during that time. I think reasonable efforts, maybe even a little beyond reasonable, have been made to generate electricity from coal economically while reducing the emission of toxic chemicals into the environment. That hasn't happened. The money wasn't wasted. We learned from the experience. It's about time we faced reality, accept the scientific evidence, and move on.

Coal miners (not minors), railroaders and others supporting the coal business are the ones who will have to move on. Politicians, all of them, will have to find ways to assist them with that process. Reasonable efforts were made to extend the life of the coal business, it didn't work.

Gerry