Jackson Free Press

"I consider seeing this plant today a look at the future ... The risks of global warming and climate change are very real. We are witnessing the impacts already, with droughts, increased storm intensity, wildfires."

—U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz describing the Kemper County power plant under construction in east Mississippi.

Why it stinks: The long-range environmental and cost-saving benefits of the way-over-budget, 582-megawatt Kemper County integrated gasification combined cycle have been hotly debated since the project's inception. So let's put all that aside for now. The main reason Moniz's claim falls flat is that Southern Co., MPC's parent, has said that Kemper is not the plant of the future. In fact, a corporate spokesperson told Reuters in September that Kemper IGCC "cannot be consistently replicated on a national level, the Kemper County Energy Facility should not serve as a primary basis for new emissions standards impacting all new coal-fired power plants."