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For decades, the federal government has touted a bright future for nonpolluting power plants fueled by coal. But in this rural corner of eastern Mississippi, the reality of so-called clean coal isn't pretty.
Mississippi Power Co.'s Kemper County plant here, meant to showcase technology for generating clean electricity from low-quality coal, ranks as one of the most-expensive U.S. fossil-fuel projects ever—at .7 billion and rising. Mississippi Power's 186,000 customers, who live in one of the poorest regions of the country, are reeling at double-digit rate increases. And even Mississippi Power's parent, Atlanta-based Southern Co., has said Kemper shouldn't be used as a nationwide model.
Meanwhile, the plant hasn't generated a single kilowatt for customers, and it's anyone's guess how well the complex operation will work. The company this month said it would forfeit 3 million in federal tax credits because it won't finish the project by its May deadline.
One of just three clean-coal plants moving ahead in the U.S., Kemper has been such a calamity for Southern that the power industry and Wall Street analysts say other utilities aren't likely to take on similar projects, even though the federal government plans to offer financial incentives.
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The General Accounting Office (GAO) studies documenting the waste and mismanagement within the CCTP have produced enough paper to fuel a power plant. Since 1984, this program has received more than .4 billion to fund research and development of experimental technologies that have not been proven to be any cleaner than traditional coal burning technologies.
The Healy Clean Coal Project, located 10 miles outside of Denali National Park in Alaska, is an example of one Clean Coal project gone bad. In the late 1980's, the project received 7 million in federal subsidies to build a new plant so that it could test a new kind of coal combustor that emits less pollution. After its completion, the plant went through two years of testing which finally deemed it unsafe and unreliable. The plant has been sitting idle since 1999, but still costs the state of Alaska million a year in debt service on bonds and maintenance on the generator.
To top it all off, Healy's older coal plant, located right next to the new one, now pollutes less than the Clean Coal Plant would - thanks to a retrofit on their conventional combustors. Not surprisingly, the new plant's only viable customer, the Golden Valley Electric Association, is no longer interested in leasing a plant that costs more to run and has no measurable benefits associated with this extra cost. In order to keep Golden Valley's business, the Healy Clean Coal Project's leaders are now asking the federal government to "lend" them 5 million so they can retrofit the "clean coal" plant with traditional technology.
The Healy Clean Coal Project is just one example of many Clean Coal projects that have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars. The GAO has documented an inexcusable amount of waste and mismanagement within this program, including six major Clean Coal projects that are running seriously behind schedule and two projects in bankruptcy.
Despite all the evidence that proves otherwise, the Department of Energy considers the Clean Coal program a success. They say that experiments like the Healy Clean Coal Project prove that it's possible to develop cleaner burning coal plants. However, stronger standards in the 1990 Clean Air Act have also led to cleaner burning coal plants, but they haven't cost taxpayers billions of dollars in research and development.
