Climate Changed
Southern's Clean Coal Experiment Ends With Mississippi Order
- Regulators order utility to reach deal to run plant on gas
- Kemper project was designed to gasify coal, capture emissions
Southern Co.'s Kemper County power plant near Meridian, Mississippi, on Feb. 25, 2014.
Photographer: Gary Tramontina/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
A seven-year, $7.5 billion effort to build a first-of-its-kind “clean coal” power plant in Mississippi is officially over.
Mississippi regulators ordered utility owner Southern Co. on Thursday to come up with a deal that’ll have the Kemper plant -- once hailed by the Obama administration as the future of coal -- running as a natural gas-fired generator instead. That ratified Southern’s June 28 proposal to pull the plug on using coal there.