Starting With a Sound Policy
Every day, more than 250 Southern Company employees come to work with the specific job of protecting and improving the air, land, and water of the communities we serve.

To do that, we have a strategy that links environmental performance with business performance. It seeks to decrease the environmental impact of our business operations.

Environmental issues are business issues. And reducing emissions from our coal-fired generating plants is a job we take seriously.

Since 1990, we've spent $2 billion on environmental controls, research, and development. We've decreased sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions by nearly 40 percent per megawatt-hour of electricity generated.

It is impossible to meet the increased energy demands of our customers without some increase in total carbon dioxide emissions. However, by increasing the percentage of natural gas in our fuel mix, improving efficiency, and using innovative technologies and green energy programs, we plan to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions per megawatt-hour by 17 percent by 2010.

We're committed to making every megawatt-hour we produce cleaner, on average, than it was the year before.

Being a Global Environmental Citizen
We are good citizens wherever we serve.

In the Southeast, we're planting 20 million trees to offset carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, our research facility in Alabama is evaluating technologies that could allow new generating plants to produce the same amount of electricity while burning 33 percent less coal.

Along the Georgia and Florida coasts, our efforts to change beach lighting help enhance loggerhead turtles' ability to nest, hatch, and find their way back to the water.

In Mississippi, our employees have volunteered countless hours cleaning up and performing a biological assessment of the Wolf River.

Outside the Sooutheast, the plant we built in Virginia - fully loaded with the latest environmental-control equipment - is one of the cleanest coal-fired generating plants in the United States.

Outside the United States, Bewag - the German utility we partly own - recently completed a comprehensive environmental conservation program at its generating plants in West Berlin. The efforts resulted in an 85 percent reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions and a 76 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions.

Our commitment to the environment goes beyond our business. By sponsoring, supporting, and running a variety of programs, we're helping to teach the public, students, and teachers about environmental responsibility.