Key Impacts, Risks, Opportunities
Lines to Everyone. Southern Company employees start every day knowing they are responsible for keeping the lights on. Susan Story, president of Southern Company Services, outlines challenges to rising costs and ways to be cost effective. Click to play
Here in the Southeast, start your microwave and that's us behind the plug. Buy a soft drink, that's us powering the bottling plant. Go fishing on a local lake, that's us operating the dam. Even if you heat your house with another fuel, we probably supply the power to run the circulating fan. People take our product for granted. Because we're everywhere with lines to everyone.
Key Impacts
By the nature of what we do—generate electricity for 4.4 million customers in the Southeast—our company has a key impact on the:
- Safety of workers by stressing the need to anticipate hazards.
- Prosperity of customers by keeping monthly electric bills affordable.
- Profits of businesses where efficient electrical use can lower operating expenses.
- Improvement of communities with service, volunteerism and support.
- Growth of a region that needs affordable energy to compete in a global market.
- Energy independence of a nation facing increased strains on domestic resources.
- Conservation of the environment and natural resources.
Learn how electric utilities work.
Opportunities
Our impacts are not necessarily distinct from each other. Some coincide and present opportunities, while others conflict and present risks. This report details how we balance priorities among employees, investors, customers, suppliers, regulators, community members and environmentalists. On balance, our opportunities and risks net out to these stakeholder goals:
- Keep electricity affordable and reliable.
- Champion conservation and energy efficiency.
- Lower the impact of electricity generation on the environment.
- Attract, develop, protect and retain skilled workers to ensure reliable supplies of electricity.
- Foster community growth and environmental stewardship.
This report focuses on our plans, progress and performance against these goals. The first three goals are covered in the energy innovation section, the fourth in work force, and the last in stewardship. See also the GRI Index and Table of Contents »
Risk Factors
Climate change, emissions, water use and other expansive risk factors are covered in detail in the report. Additional risk factors to future earnings potential, outlined in our 2012 10K (p I-14), include:
- Substantial governmental regulation
- Costs of compliance with environmental laws
- Changing transmission regulatory structures
- Competitive activity in the wholesale electricity markets
- Ability of subsidiaries to pay upstream dividends or to repay funds to Southern Company
- Successful operation of facilities
- Higher costs and penalties as a result of mandatory reliability standards
- Sales under power purchase agreements
- Additional costs or delays in the construction of new plants or other facilities
- Changes in technology
- Environmental, health, regulatory, terrorism and financial threats
- Changes in power prices and fuel costs
- A downgrade in credit ratings
- Losses from the use of derivative contracts
- Adequate fuel supplies
- Rising or falling demand for power
- Weather conditions
- Attraction and retention of a qualified work force
- Availability of funds through capital markets and financial institutions
- The value of benefit plans and decommissioning trust assets
- Changing economic conditions which may affect the ability to obtain adequate insurance coverage, and the financial stability of customers
- Energy conservation and energy price increases
Privacy Policy and Terms of Use | Cautionary Notice About Forward-Looking Statements
