ATLANTA – Southern Company today announced that its Gadsden Steam Plant, owned and operated by the company’s Alabama Power subsidiary, recently won the annual Industry Excellence Award from Southeastern Electric Exchange (SEE) for its switchgrass renewable energy project.

Switchgrass is a native prairie grass grown easily in the South. When blended with coal to use as a fuel, emissions can be reduced by 10 percent or more. Initial results from the mixing of switchgrass and coal in Gadsden’s 60-megawatt Unit 2 facility produced reductions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury. The testing was conducted during the spring of 2001. Southern Research Institute and Auburn University also contributed to the study.

“Southern Company is committed to providing a diverse choice of fuel sources because we know diversity isn’t merely an option, it’s a necessity,” said Paul Bowers, president of Southern Company Generation and Energy Marketing. “And among those options, we must include renewable sources.”

Bowers added that the company’s efforts in research and development have been at the forefront of the industry for decades. “Our efforts with switchgrass project are just one of several alternative fuel options we’re currently testing,” he added. “We are proud of our environmental accomplishments. As we’ve demonstrated in the past, we often go beyond compliance. We also look for environmental solutions.”

Jack Eastis, a research specialist at Southern Company in Birmingham, joined Billy Zemo, a senior engineer at Plant Gadsden, and Doug Boylan, a consulting engineer at Southern Company in Birmingham, in the SEE environmental category award. The award was judged on the achievement of expected results, innovation, improvement, project complexity, as well as how the project met or exceeded all requirements.

Alabama Power also took Second Place in the environmental category for a wetlands project at its Gorgas Steam Plant.

SEE is a non-profit trade association that represents investor-owned utilities across the Southeast and as far north and west as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. The association was founded in 1933.

With 4 million customers and nearly 35,000 megawatts of generating capacity, Atlanta-based Southern Company (NYSE: SO) is the premier super-regional energy company in the Southeast and a leading U.S. producer of electricity. Southern Company owns electric utilities in four states, a fast-growing competitive generation company and an energy services business, as well as fiber optics and wireless communications. Southern Company brands are known for excellent customer service, high reliability and retail electric prices that are 15 percent below the national average. Southern Company has been named No. 1 on Fortune magazine’s 2002 “America’s Most Admired Companies” list in the Electric and Gas Utility industry. Southern Company has more than 500,000 shareholders, making its common stock one of the most widely held in the United States. Visit the Southern Company Web site at www.southerncompany.com.