Dive Summary:

• Southern Co.’s new coal gasification plant in Kemper County Mississippi is generating more controversy as cost overruns bog the flow of the project still under construction. The utility will need an additional $160 million or more to pay for ongoing construction, inventory and start-up energy costs. That brings the cost of the plant to $4.5 billion, a figure doubling initial projections and outraging various stakeholders.
• Cost overruns have been a big deal with Kemper. Two top executives at Southern's Mississippi Power unit were let go after suspicion arose that Mississippi Power withheld information about Kemper's rising costs from the Mississippi Public Service Commission.
• In April, Southern Co. announced that it needed to spend an additional $540 million for higher quality pipe and additional workers to complete the 582-megawatt, coal gasification power plant by May 2014, and took a $333 million charge to first-quarter earnings.

From the article:
“The PSC put a cap on the Kemper project, saying the utility can recover no more than $2.88 billion from customers for the IGCC plant…”