Coal’s Best Hope Rising With Costliest U.S. Power Plant
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Rising from the scrub pines of central Mississippi is a $5.2 billion construction project that may determine the future of coal in the age of global warming.
It’s here in Kemper County, 90 miles southwest of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that utility Southern Co. is building the first large-scale power plant in the U.S. designed to transform coal into gas, capture the carbon dioxide and pump it underground. If it succeeds -- and there are plenty of doubters -- it will boost the fortunes of the fossil fuel that drove the Industrial Revolution but has lost ground to cheaper, cleaner alternatives in the U.S.