Too ambitious, technology untried, like Katrina and the BP oil spill: that’s Southern Company’s Kemper Coal plant, according to a Mississippi Public Service Commissioner.
Geoff Pender wrote for ClarionLedger.com yesterday, PSC member slams Miss. Power,
“This is the greatest transfer of wealth from customers to a monopoly in the history of the state of Mississippi,” [Brandon] Presley said. “Where are all these so-called conservatives on that?”
Maybe Mississippi, like Georgia, Continue reading
SO CEO Tom Fanning used Julia O’Neal’s question about cost overruns
to tout the alleged benefits of Kemper Coal,
which include selling CO2 to oil companies to pump into the ground to
produce more oil.
He didn’t mention that oil is then burned to produce more CO2.
And that Mississippi lignite coal he said would otherwise stay in the ground?
Yes it and its CO2 would stay there if SO would get on with solar instead of coal.
Before her question, he had not said much about that project, mostly this about Major Projects, at 29 minutes and 28 seconds in SO’s own video of the 22 May 2013 Southern Company Stockholder meeting. You’ll have to skip there manually, because of the SO’s video format. SO prohibited “unauthorized” videoing, so we don’t have the usual LAKE video on YouTube.
I always call out Vogtle and Kemper County. Both projects are going to serve our customers for decades to come. We’ve had some challenges with Kemper. We’ll probably talk about those later. But when I think about the value that these projects will bring, I think our customers, and the economy of the southeast, will be benefited for decades. And we’re very excited about the progress we’re making on both of those.
It’s curious he mentioned SO’s flagship coal and nuclear projects
without saying coal or nuclear.
And if by “progress” he means Continue reading
Standard & Poor’s lowered Southern Company’s rating from stable to negative
because of the risks of Kemper Coal in Mississippi, and SO’s stock price plummetted.
This was immediately after
activists grilled SO on that and other topics
at the
SO stockholder meeting.
Wait ’till S&P catches on to the risks of SO’s
19-months-late and $1 billion-over-budget nukes at Plant Vogtle in Georgia!
Or SO’s non-action so far on
the challenge of distributed solar.
Kristin Jones wrote for WSJ 24 May 2013, S&P Lowers Outlook on Southern Co., Noting Project Risks,
Continue reading
Bloomberg has
video of Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning trying to explain away
how cost overruns at SO’s nuclear Plant Vogtle in Georgia are
linked to cost overruns SO’s coal Plant Kemper in Mississippi.
Betty Liu: This project along with the Vogtle project… has some investors wondering maybe Southern Company has stretched itself too thin, with these two major projects you’ve got under way….Fanning: In fact, the Vogtle project is going beautifully. We have delayed the in-service date by a year, but….
That’s funny, GA PSC and the AJC say Continue reading
Apparently $1.88 billion wasn’t enough for
Southern Company to charge the ratepayers
of Mississippi Power enough for their “clean coal” plant.
“Escalating costs”: kind of like
SO’s new nukes at Plant Vogtle?
Southern Company CEO Fanning says “I know people will try and link
those, but they are not at all even similar.”
What do you think?
Kristi Swartz wrote for the AJC 24 April 2103, Miss. power plant costs hurt Southern Co. profit,
Continue readingRenewable Energy Portfolio Standards (RPS) are being proposed in Georgia and ALEC is trying to do away with them in North Carolina. If ALEC doesn’t like them, there must be something good about RPS. Let’s get on with real renewable energy in Georgia.
In Georgia,
HB 503,
sponsored by Karla Drenner, Carol Fullerton, Debbie Buckner, Scott
Holcomb, Spencer Frye, and Earnest Smith,
would create a Renewable Energy Credits Trading program as part of
renewable portfolio standards,
as Kyle wrote for Spencer Frye’s blog 10 March 2013,
Let the Sunshine In.
Unfortunately, HB 503 includes biomass as a renewable energy source.
Maybe they just mean landfill gas, which I consider a special case
since it’s being produced anyway, and since methane is worse as
a greenhouse gas than CO2, burning landfill gas makes some sense.
Nope, in
the actual bill, 46-3-71 (1):
‘Biomass material’ means organic matter, excluding fossil fuels and black liquor, including agricultural crops, plants, trees, wood, wood wastes and residues, sawmill waste, sawdust, wood chips, bark chips, and forest thinning, harvesting, or clearing residues; wood waste from pallets or other wood demolition debris; peanut shells; cotton plants; corn stalks; and plant matter, including aquatic plants, grasses, stalks, vegetation, and residues, including hulls, shells, or cellulose containing fibers
The barn door in there is “harvesting”, which can mean whole trees, but the rest isn’t much better. We don’t need to be burning things that increase atmospheric CO2 and end up stripping our forests. In North Carolina they staretd with just tops and limbs and then tried to escalate to whole trees. We already fought off the biomass boondoggle here in south Georgia; let’s not have it encouraged statewide. Especially when we have better solutions: solar and wind power. HB 503 isn’t going to get passed this year, since it didn’t make crossover day, so maybe its sponsors can clean up that biomass mess before they submit it again.
Speaking of North Carolina, Continue reading