Editorial Board
'Clean Coal' Will Always Be a Fantasy
Mississippi gives up on carbon capture, and the rest of the world should, too.
Boondoggle.
Photographer: Gary Tramontina/Bloomberg"Clean coal," always dubious as a concept and never proved as a reality, has now failed as business proposition. Southern Co. has decided to stop work on a process that would have captured carbon dioxide emissions from a coal plant in Mississippi.
Giving up on the project, which was nearly $5 billion over budget and three years behind schedule, makes sense for Southern's customers and shareholders. And giving up on carbon capture makes sense for the energy industry. The technology is too expensive and complicated to be deployed quickly or widely enough to appreciably protect the climate.