Southern Company, the massive utility best known in this space for being one of Willie Soon’s secret funders, was once again exposed for keeping shady secrets last week. Documents obtained by The Guardian’s Sharon Kelly reveal that the plant’s owner, utility giant Southern Company, knew about significant problems with its groundbreaking Kemper clean coal plant well before it admitted to them to regulators.
The Kemper plant has been held up as the exemplar of clean coal: a shining beacon of how the coal industry will survive in a carbon-constrained future. Unfortunately, it cost a fortune to build and only ended up running for five days before becoming too expensive to operate. And during its construction, as Kelly reveals, management spent years keeping vital information away from regulators.
The investigation shows that for three years Kemper execs sat on information that the plant would require a 45% downtime during its first five years--which dramatically increased its costs. Skyrocketing costs, of course, make the idea that coal can and should continue to serve as a “baseload” fuel laughable.
In 2013, Southern Co. CEO Tom Fanning said in an earnings call that the coal storage dome was a sign of “tremendous” construction progress. Seems he and Trump share the same “tremendous” tell: months earlier, documents obtained by the Guardian show, the dome had begun crumbling until there was “a hole in the ceiling the size of a small house.” The dome had to be razed and rebuilt.
Having received over $400 million in taxpayer funds to prove that clean coal is a way to meet climate goals while still burning coal, the plant managed produce electricity via its “clean coal” production line for all of five days last year. And yet, there are those who decry the spending on renewables for supposedly intermittent power it provides! One wonders how much wind and solar could be produced for $400 million. Certainly more than five days’ worth, right?
Clearly, then, “clean coal” is not going to be the savior of coal country that President Trump fantasizes about. But we’re not feeling too confident that these revelations will sink its prospects under this administration, who is now responsible for recovering taxpayer funds from the failed project. After all, the Guardian notes that the Department of Energy head Rick Perry has called Fanning an “old friend.” And Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ top career campaign donors? None other than Southern Co. and its law firm, Balch and Bingham.
Despite all these failures, Kemper’s political connection and Trump’s love for “beautiful, clean coal” means that no matter the shady business dealings and cost overruns, the plant’s future, we’re told, will be tremendous.
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