Southern Company Servies and KEPCO explore clean coal

Southern Company Services signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) to jointly explore the deployment of clean coal power generation and carbon capture and storage technologies.

Among the technologies to be evaluated is Transport Integrated Gasification (TRIG), the 21st century coal technology at the center of subsidiary Mississippi Power’s Kemper County energy facility. The Kemper facility is designed to generate electricity using low-rank coal with resulting carbon emissions better than a similarly sized natural gas plant. At least 65% of the plant’s carbon emissions are expected to be captured and repurposed through enhanced oil recovery.

The agreement also provides for the testing of KEPCO’s carbon capture technologies at the US Department of Energy’s National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC) in Alabama, which is operated by Southern Company Services.

The MOU with KEPCO is the Southern Company system’s fifth such agreement with a leading international energy company. Last year Southern Company announced similar agreements with Shenhua Group Corporation Limited and China Huaneng Group – two of China’s largest energy companies – as well as with Huaneng Clean Energy Research Institute. Earlier this year, Southern Company Services entered into a research agreement with the Korea Institute of Energy Research, a Korean government-funded research institute which collaborates with KEPCO in the development of advanced green energy technologies.