The Kemper Project, also called the Kemper County energy facility or Plant Ratcliffe, is a natural gas-fired electrical generating station currently under construction in Kemper County, Mississippi. Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, began construction of the plant in 2010. The initial, coal-fired project was central to President Obama's Climate Plan, as it was to be based on "clean coal" and was being considered for more support from the Congress and the incoming Trump Administration in late 2016. If it had become operational with coal, the Kemper Project would have been a first-of-its-kind electricity plant to employ gasification and carbon capture technologies at this scale.
Project management problems had been noted at the Kemper Project. The plant was supposed to be in service by May 2014, at a cost of $2.4 billion. As of June 2017, the project was still not in service, and the cost had increased to $7.5 billion. According to a Sierra Club analysis, Kemper is the most expensive power plant ever built, based on its generating capacity. In June 2017, Southern Company and Mississippi Power announced that the Kemper project would switch to burning only natural gas in an effort to manage costs.
Background
Kemper County is a small county in eastern Mississippi, roughly 30 miles north of Meridian. Kemper County was chosen as the site for the plant to take advantage of local brown coal (lignite), an untapped natural resource, while providing geographic diversity to help balance the electric demand and strengthen electric reliability in Mississippi. Mississippi Power is a large energy company based in Gulfport, providing energy for Gulfport, Biloxi, Hattiesburg, Meridian, Pascagoula, Columbia, Laurel, Waveland, Lucedale and Picayune.
Mississippi Power intended the Kemper Project to produce cleaner energy through the use of integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) and carbon capture technologies, eliminating the majority of emissions normally emitted by a traditional coal plant. A study conducted by Southern Company (parent of Mississippi Power) stated that the Kemper Project would have been "a large undertaking with high visibility and ... help set the stage for future coal-based power generation.
On June 3, 2010, the Mississippi Public Service Commission certified the project and the ground-breaking ceremony took place. Governor Haley Barbour was present.