A two and a half hour southbound trip down MS-HWY 9 from Oxford lies the future of coal energy. In Kemper County, a $2.4 billion — now over $5.24 billion and counting — “clean coal” power plant is preparing to begin generating electricity.
At Gov. Phil Bryant’s December Energy Summit, Newt Gingrich said the Kemper plant was the most significant energy experiment in the world. In another view, Guggenheim Fellow Richard Conniff suggests that the term clean coal is an ingenious myth created after $60 million of promotion from the coal industry.
Regardless, Mississippi is the laboratory for this clean coal experiment. If you are surprised that Mississippi is leading the world in a green energy project, please channel that feeling into skepticism.
A division of the Atlanta-based Southern Company subsidiary, Mississippi Power, is building the Kemper County Energy Facility in order to, allegedly, prepare for future expiration of other energy plants. By this fall, the coal plant will start producing a portion of its 582-megawatt capacity of electricity. The company expects to sell this energy to 412,000 people. Unless they decide to move away or do without electricity, the region’s consumers will have to accept the 22 percent increase in expensive energy.
Despite the energy boom of cheap natural gas, Mississippi Power has insisted that the lignite-fired plant ensure future energy security through supply diversity. Electricity markets are a local monopoly. Instead of letting consumers benefit from the lower rate, the company is using the natural gas boom to give itself a cushion.
Coal is much more environmentally costly than both oil and natural gas; however, coal is abundant. In a company report, Mississippi Power claims that the trifecta of coal, natural gas and lignite will benefit the region. The distinction between the terms coal and lignite is essentially a lie. Lignite’s other name is brown coal. Lignite is a type of coal of the lowest quality. It is damp and of low density. It burns less hot than all other forms of coal. More land and input energy is required to produce electricity from this inferior resource. Since the energy quality is so poor, lignite is very cheap.
The large opportunity for profit, not the clean energy aspect, had Mississippi business interests salivating after the large deposit of lignite in the eastern part of the state. However, new EPA regulations authorized by the 1970 Clean Air Act were put in place to limit further global warming. Carbon dioxide emissions needed to be cut in approximately half for a new coal plant to be built.
The Kemper County plant claims that it can capture 60 percent of the carbon dioxide waste. An experimental form of carbon sequestration technology makes this project feasible. Steam captures the gas in what is called gasification. Then, the company sells the carbon dioxide to nearby oil companies to the tune of $50 million a year.
Newt Gingrich stated that “In the United States, we have trillions of dollars’ worth of coal. Literally trillions.” The project is about money. Right now, only the company is making money. The state, on the other side, is spending for the project like the Joker burning stacks of money in “The Dark Knight.”
The Kemper County plant is virtually stealing. The plant is now $3 billion over budget. Repeat, $3 billion over budget. Again, the project has cost $5.24 and is one of the most expensive energy projects ever. To put just the $3 billion in context, Mississippi could pay the $7,928 it spends per student for an additional 378,405 out of the state’s 492,000 students.
The clear evidence of the Kemper County Coal Plant’s high cost, environmental damage and political and business croneyism may lead you to oppose the endeavor. Gov. Bryant probably does not care. He is valiantly committed to protecting the state from some nefarious enemy, perhaps those of an environmental and conservation leaning. His rhetoric suggests that a civil war of energy is being waged in the state.
“We will not know defeat in Mississippi,” Bryant boasted to international visitors to the Kemper County plant. “We will be victorious in our energy policies and it is starting here and it will continue.”
Well, apparently faux-green projects are the Mississippi way. Here’s to hoping the rest of the world does not follow suit.
Neal McMillin is a senior Southern Studies major from Madison.
