The Trump regime has hyped a so-called "clean coal" power plant in Kemper County, Mississippi that is still under construction, but construction has now been suspended and the plant, which has been pumping natural gas, may switch to gas "indefinitely."
The Kemper plant, which has cost $7.5 billion so far, has been supplying customers with electricity by running on natural gas for three years, but its once-promising carbon capture and coal gasification technology has been $4 billion over budget and three years behind schedule. [...]
Thanks to legislation passed by the Mississippi legislature, Southern has been able to pass along about $800 million of those costs to ratepayers, the company said.
I hadn't considered the enormous cost of simply building a so-called "clean coal" power plant and now that I know what it costs this is quite the boondoggle. $7.5 billion is more than the cost of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, and it isn't even fully operational.
Local taxpayers and ratepayers, if they know what's good for them, should be calling for heads to roll. They could have skipped the "clean coal" fantasy from the beginning and saved themselves billions. Just the cost overrun of $4 billion would be enough to construct several natural gas plants.