The projected price tag for Southern Co.’s Kemper County Energy Facility carbon capture and storage project in Mississippi now sits at $6.75 billion after a new budget overage of $9.8 million, the company reported Friday in a monthly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The project was initially billed at $2.4 billion. The price increase is “related to operational readiness and challenges in start-up and commissioning activities,” according to the filing.
Regardless of the ever-increasing estimated cost, the company holds that the plant will reach full operation by the third quarter of this year. Extending the in-service date beyond Aug. 31 is estimated to result in additional costs of roughly $25 million to $35 million per month to cover labor, materials, fuel, and “operational resources” needed for startup and commissioning.
The project, a new-build, post-combustion CCS facility near the city of Meridian, has been producing energy with natural gas since August 2014. Once fully operational, the plant will use Mississippi lignite, a low-rank brown coal, to produce electricity. It will employ a custom integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) system and CCS technology to produce electricity from the coal with carbon emissions roughly equal to that of natural gas. The CCS and IGCC portions of the plant are not yet online.
