Southern Company Highlights
- Southern Company is on schedule to be the first U.S. utility in more than 30 years to build new nuclear-powered generation. The project will add two new units with more than 2,200 megawatts of capacity at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle, which has two existing units with more than 2,400 megawatts of capacity.
- Southern Company is building a 582-megawatt transport integrated gasification (TRIG) plant in Kemper County, Mississippi, with technology that will capture 65 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions from the plant.
- Southern Company invests billions of dollars on environmental technologies that reduce emissions from coal generation. Since 1990, we’ve reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by approximately 60 percent and nitrogen oxide emissions by approximately 70 percent, while increasing electricity generation by more than 30 percent.
- Wholesale subsidiary Southern Power has begun construction of a 100-megawatt (MW) biomass plant in Sacul, Texas, that will be one of the largest in the country.
- Southern Company operating subsidiaries are evaluating opportunities to convert existing fossil units to biomass over the next decade. Decisions on individual projects will depend on costs, regulatory/legislative requirements, biomass fuel availability and other site-specific factors.
- Southern Company is partnering with Turner Renewable Energy on a 30-MW solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant in Cimarron, New Mexico.
- Southern Company is conducting research at several plants into co-firing coal with wood chips, wood pellets, sawdust, urban wood waste, peanut hulls, switchgrass and other biomass to determine the costs and impacts of the process.
- Southern Company and Georgia Tech partnered on an extensive study of offshore wind potential in the Southeast, identifying and detailing several key challenges that must be addressed.
- Southern Company is conducting a demonstration of seven different solar PV technologies in Georgia and four solar PV technologies in Alabama.
- Southern Company subsidiaries, both individually and in partnerships, are offering customers a growing amount of renewable energy options, which may be purchased in “blocks” of green energy from qualified sources.
- Southern Company is one of the nation’s largest generators of hydroelectric power, with a combined generating capacity of 2,758 MW. Sixteen MW of new hydro capacity planned for the next five years, and other incremental opportunities are being evaluated.