Over the next decade, Southern Company plans to install more than two dozen additional scrubbers, more than a dozen SCRs, and several baghouses at power plants throughout our service territory.
Southern Company and Georgia Power’s Plant Yates received EPRI honors for leadership in mercury emissions control technology in 2003.
Mercury
Mercury is a metal that occurs naturally in the environment. It is an element that is part of the Earth's crust.
Mercury is also released as a by-product of the combustion of fossil fuels, especially coal. Mercury can accumulate in the environment and in plants and animals, moving up through the food chain. Combined, U.S. power plants produce about one percent of global mercury emissions.
The EPA has recently established reduction standards for mercury emissions from coal-fueled power plants. By 2018, we project that Southern Company's total mercury emissions will be about 70 percent below today's levels.
Mercury Control Research
Southern Company conducted the first full-scale tests of activated carbon injection for mercury control. We also built and are using the first integrated research facility, near Pensacola, Florida, to develop and test new power plant mercury control technologies. Our research work has tested new full-scale methods to control mercury emissions and has improved the accuracy of mercury continuous emissions monitors.