Tallying Up the True Price of Clean Coal

The federal government is touting a new power plant in Mississippi as an historic advance in the fight against climate change. The facility, built in Kemper County by Southern Co., is the first large-scale coal-fired U.S. power plant built to capture carbon. To do that, it will convert coal into gas, then use the gas to power turbines, creating electricity. Instead of venting the resulting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the plant will turn it into a liquid, which will then be used to extract hard-to-access oil from nearby fields. U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz calls Kemper the plant of the future and says the country could use 100 more of them. Perhaps. But there are good reasons to be skeptical.

The first question is whether the new technology will work as promised. Southern recently delayed to next year the date it expects the plant to become operational, citing among other things “unanticipated installation inefficiencies.”