Last week I had an email from a friend who is an engineer for one of the nation's largest power companies. He said their company has already made a decision to no longer support solar energy. They are now considering the discontinuance of wind turbine farms because neither is cost effective for mass production of energy and the wind turbines have a short production life.
He is not affiliated with The Southern Co. but I know for a fact they are building 14 power plants in TX and OK. Some are older hydro, fossil, and nuclear plants and they are upgrading, adding scrubbers and adding 2 additional reactors to some of those plants. There are 4 new nuclear plants being built by Bechtel, and Fluor.
The Southern Co. already has DOE permits plus $400 million in tax incentives and $2.4 billion loan approval to build a Coal Gas plant at Liberty, MS. They will be mining lignite (young brown coal) to fuel it from their own mine a short distance from the power plant. It will be the first power plant in the world that is able to recapture most of the CO2 and coal byproducts and sell them on the open market. Money from the sale of the byproducts will be part of the recovery cost for building and operating the plant.
(The last paragraph is a part of a news release from the CEO of The Southern Company)