[3] The initial, coal-fired project was central to President Obama's Climate Plan, as it was to be based on "clean coal"[4] and was being considered for more support from the Congress and the incoming Trump Administration in late 2016.

[5] 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.

[8] 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.

[12] 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.

TRIG technology can utilize lignite, which accounts for more than half of the world's coal reserves and drove global interest in the plant.

"[41] If the carbon, capture and sequestration technology used at the Kemper Project had been successful, it would have been the United States’ first clean coal plant.

[6] The need for this type of technology has come from decades of debate among energy leaders on how to minimize carbon dioxide emissions into the Earth's atmosphere.

[43] Realizing the demand for coal was not decreasing, Mississippi Power, Southern Company, KBR, and the Department of Energy invested in technology to capture emissions from burning fossil fuels.

[44] The investing bodies argued the type of clean coal technology they claim are found at the Kemper Project will be adopted worldwide; bringing profits back to Mississippi customers.

[47] CCS uses a combination of technologies to capture the CO2 released in the combustion process, transport it to a suitable storage location and finally store it (typically deep underground) where it cannot enter the atmosphere and thus contribute to climate change.

The gasifier and auxiliary equipment at the site were sized to provide reliable data for confident scale-up to commercial scale.

In May 2016, Southern Company and its subsidiary Mississippi Power announced they were being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission related to overruns at the Kemper Project.

[60] Treetop had contracted to buy carbon dioxide from the Kemper plant and had built a pipeline in preparation to receive the gas.

In 2011, the Sierra Club and Bridge the Gulf organizations spearheaded the effort to lobby the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to deny the required wetland permits, which Mississippi Company would have to fill to build the plant's facilities.

[68] Additionally, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich expressed his support for the Kemper Project, stating that in his opinion it had the potential to be the single most important experiment in developing electricity in the world today.

Gingrich's closing words of encouragement for the Kemper Project and the state of Mississippi: "You have a chance to be a remarkable leader in the country in the next 10 to 20 years.

[68] These transferred funds were moved from Florida to Mississippi in December 2008, after Haley Barbour's Washington D.C. lobbying firm, the BGR Group, pushed for the reallocation.

[68] Southern Company has been a BGR client since 1999, having spent a total of $2.6 million with the firm, according to federal lobbying disclosure documents.

[71] In 2017 the Mississippi Public Service Commission recommended the facility burn natural gas rather than syngas from coal to avoid the risk of further consumer rate increases.