Climate Change Solutions

Climate change is a challenging issue not just for electric utilities and Southern Company but for our nation and the world. Leadership on this issue requires developing and deploying technologies that reduce greenhouse gases while making sure that electricity remains reliable and affordable.

Specific Long-term Goals

With other members of Edison Electric Institute, an association of shareholder-owned electric companies, we support climate change framework that calls for an 80 percent reduction of carbon emissions from current levels by 2050 and also recommends to Congress a unified industry position for allocating emissions allowances distributed to the utility sector under potential cap-and-trade legislation. Details on climate change position »

To realize policy goals on climate change, we're committed to finding solutions that make technological, environmental, and economic sense. See our Climate Change Actions Map to find projects in progress across our service territory. Breakthroughs include:

Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage

Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of combustion. Southern Company is researching—with the federal government and other partners—how to capture and store carbon dioxide emitted from power plants to keep it out of the atmosphere. See also DOE Carbon Sequestration Atlas.

• National Carbon Capture Center - Southern Company will manage and operate the U.S. Department of Energy's National Carbon Capture Center, expected to be a focal point of national efforts to develop advanced technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-based power generation. The center, located in Alabama and scheduled to be fully operational in 2010, will work with scientists and technology developers from government, industry and universities who are creating the next generation of carbon capture technologies.
• 25-Megawatt Demonstration - Alabama Power's Plant Barry is the host site for a major demonstration project using carbon capture technology developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. Between 100,000 and 150,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year—the equivalent of emissions from 25 megawatts of generating capacity—will be captured. The carbon dioxide will be transported by pipeline to a site about 10 miles away, where it will be injected for permanent underground storage in a deep saline geologic formation. The project, which will demonstrate start-to-finish carbon capture and sequestration, begins in 2011.
• Underground Carbon Dioxide Injection - Mississippi Power's Plant Daniel, as part of the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, is a host site for an underground carbon dioxide injection project. In this Department of Energy-funded, pilot-scale demonstration, 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide were injected into a deep saline rock formation located 8,500 feet below the ground surface and now is being monitored. In addition to furthering the understanding of technological issues, the project is focusing on public acceptance and permitting issues.
• Unmineable Coal Seam Injection - Near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, we are studying the injection of carbon dioxide into an unmineable coal seam. Coal seams show promise for geologic storage, as well as for coal-bed methane recovery.
• Enhanced Oil Recovery Injection - In partnership with the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Denbury Resources, we will examine the capacity of the Citronelle oil field to serve as a carbon dioxide storage site.
• Chilled Ammonia Carbon Dioxide Capture Pilot - Southern Company is a charter member of an Electric Power Research Institute-led consortium working with Alstom to demonstrate carbon dioxide capture from power plant exhaust gas using chilled ammonia.

TRIG^TM Clean Coal Technology

Because we know coal will be in our fuel mix for some time to come, it makes sense to find cleaner ways to use it. Over the past decade, Southern Company, with the Department of Energy, has been developing cleaner, less expensive, more reliable methods for power production from coal at the Power Systems Development Facility near Wilsonville, Alabama.

Rather than burning coal directly to make electricity, we're breaking coal down into chemical components. Gases that result from this chemical breakdown can fuel integrated gasification combined cycle power plants, which are more efficient and therefore cleaner than current coal. Moreover, impurities can be removed from the coal before it is fired, avoiding some emissions.

Now we've taken gasification one step further. Developed with our partner KBR, a new process, called Transport Integrated Gasification, uses air rather than pure oxygen—and lower-grade sub-bituminous and lignite coals—to more affordably gasify the coal. The result is the most efficient coal-fired electricity generation technology in the world, with 20 to 25 percent fewer carbon dioxide emissions than the fleet of existing coal plants.

TRIG and other Power Systems Development Facility gasification technologies will also make carbon dioxide capture and geological storage cheaper than capture and storage at existing coal-fueled plants. Already, Southern Company has proposed to build a 580-megawatt gasification plant in Kemper County, Mississippi, that would use TRIG technology with locally-mined lignite along with natural gas.

The Kemper County Integrated Gas Combined Cycle Project will be the only IGCC plant planned in the U.S. providing carbon capture and sequestration. It will capture and store carbon dioxide emissions the day it begins commercial operations. In addition, IGCC has fewer nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury emissions than traditional pulverized coal technology.

Performance

Other Southern Company efforts lowering carbon dioxide emissions:
Renewables | Energy Efficiency | Nuclear Power

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