Secondly, although the sentiment is satisfying, the location was not chosen to “take advantage of Mississippians”. the location was chosen because it is at the mouth of a lignite coal mine, the type of coal used in the gasification process. So there would be be zero transportation costs, which helps make this (in (disastrously wrong) theory) economically feasible.

don’t get me wrong, it is quite the boondoggle. but i feel it’s important that our team get the facts right, and not join the realm of fake news.

Bottom line is that “clean” coal is really expensive, not really clean (only removes 65% of particulate emmissions), and with natural gas so cheap no one in their right mind would pursue this technology.

Then again, natural gas is so cheap because of fracking, which may be even worse for the environment than burning coal, but that’s a whole other story.

Just no such thing as “actually clean” coal. And that goes to the actual mining practices as well. Pollution and environmental damage doesn’t just happen at the coal plant. There are just better, more efficient and sustainable technologies out there that provide far more promise than anything having to do with coal. And there is where the money should be going. In fact, solar has surpassed fossil fuels in terms of world wide investment in new facilities. And that is for a reason.

I don’t disagree, mostly.

The thinking here seems to have been to build a clean—actually clean, not just less filthy—coal-fired plant using the best new technology. Advanced coal gasification and carbon capture looked like they were on the cusp of becoming commercially viable when the project began. The Obama administration was excited about the potential.

It was a large-scale experiment that failed (in part because the experiment wasn’t run at smaller scales first).

–alopecia

I would go with the latter. Research on technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere would not really require the building of a coal power plant and would probably be done quicker and more efficiently without it.

I’m less inclined than others to declare the Kemper plant a boondoggle. If everything had worked as hoped, it would have been a leg up for new technologies (of course, the plant would still have been using one of the filthiest imaginable fuels, but cleaning up emissions from coal is the worst-case scenario); however, that just wasn’t the reality.

So there’s no misunderstanding, I do agree that the plant cost far too much and the wrong people are on the hook for far too much of the bill.

Carbon capture and sequestration will likely be vitally important in the near future, since we will almost certainly need to scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The lessons learned from Kemper County may help make CCS happen more quickly.

Or maybe I’m trying too hard to turn lemons into lemonade …

–alopecia