Electric utility Southern Co. said the coal-fired power plant with carbon capture and storage technology it is building in Mississippi will need an extra $496 million to complete it, bringing the total price tag to $6.1 billion.
The Kemper County, Miss., plant is slated to become the first U.S. facility built with carbon capture technology on a commercial scale. The technology traps carbon emissions and pumps them underground, considered necessary to keep power plant emissions under control in the future. But the technology is costly and hasn’t been installed anywhere in the world without subsidies.
The Kemper project has been hurt by missed deadlines and cost overruns. Mississippi Power, the Southern Co. subsidiary that runs the facility, originally pitched it as a $2.4 billion project when it snagged more than $400 million in federal incentives. The project was originally slated for June 2015 completion, but Mississippi Power pushed it back until at least March 2016.
Now, customers might be on the hook for $167 million in additional costs, according to the Associated Press. That’s if regulators approval the request for the funds to pay for labor, material and interest due to the delayed start.
