That Sulfur Smell? It's Duke Energy

Woops. Ugly and likely uglier, too.

Duke Energy CEO James Rogers faced increasing questions about his leadership, in part because of conflicts of interest with top company officials and the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. Now the state’s Ethics Commission has fined a former top lawyer at IURC because he discussed a potential job with Duke while he participated in cases that would determine cost recovery for the utility’s controversial Edwardsport coal gasification plant.

...Cost estimates for the plant have swelled from nearly $2 billion when first proposed in 2007 to almost $3 billion last year, according to the Charlotte Business Journal. Opponents of the plant had cited the immaturity of coal gasification technology, but Duke in part promoted it as a carbon sequestration experiment (with $1 million in federal funds) to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced in power generation.

COAL GASIFICATION?

That was, IIRC, a Jimmuh Carter seashells-and-balloons idea which ultimately bankrupted Allis-Chalmers because the damnfool who ran the Company at the time was another Gummint camp-follower.

HT: AmSpecBlog