We're Excited About the Future
That's because Southern Company energy costs less and is always there.

In the Southeast, our costs are 19 percent below the national average for investor-owned utilities. Our plants operate with a profit-and-loss focus and are on target to reduce our total generating cost even more by 2000.

In addition, we continue to reduce our impact on the environment. Over the past seven years, we've reduced, avoided, or offset nearly 23 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Since 1990, we have eliminated 37 percent of our combined sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions per megawatt-hour. And we have additional reductions planned.

As the largest generator of electricity in the United States, we're always looking for new and better ways to do things.

In a southwestern Atlanta neighborhood lined with mature trees that cause havoc with electric service during bad weather, we developed and implemented an innovative way of automatically reconnecting circuits that has reduced many individual outage times from nearly an hour down to about 45 seconds.

In Mississippi, school cafeterias that otherwise could not afford much-needed upgrades are now preparing lunches on new, all-electric cooking equipment obtained through our Kitchen Lease program.

Driving Our Business Outside the Southeast
The management expertise and operational skills acquired over 70 years of doing business in the Southeast are helping elsewhere.

Applying our best practices to South Western Electricity (SWEB) - our subsidiary in England - has reduced its operating costs by nearly one-third and improved its reliability by 50 percent.

Sual - our 1,200-megawatt plant under construction in the Philippines - is projected to be one of the lowest-cost generators in the region.

Whether it's the plants we're acquiring in California and New York, the generation we're adding in New England, or the plants we're planning to build in the Midwest - low costs and high reliability will drive our business. Wherever we go.

Now that's SO cool.