Monday, April 25, 2005 For more information, contact: Heather Martin Southern Company Gas 404-506-5283 or 770-550-1275 Southern Company Gas to Serve as Sponsor at Chick-fil-A Charity Championship

ATLANTA (April 25, 2005) – Southern Company Gas, a subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), will serve as a sponsor of the Chick-fil-A Charity Championship hosted by Nancy Lopez on May 9-15, 2005, at Eagle’s Landing Country Club in Stockbridge. The annual LPGA event, now in its 14th year, raises funds for charities that help children, including WinShape Homes®, AIM for the Handicapped and the East Lake Community Foundation.

“At Southern Company, we believe in unquestionable trust, superior performance and total commitment,” said Jocelyn Stargel, director of External Affairs for Southern Company Gas. “We feel that this event, the relationship with Chick-fil-A and the charities this tournament supports are in line with our values and will help the communities we serve.”

As part of its sponsorship, Southern Company Gas will host an Executive Symposium with Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy. The event will occur at 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 12 in the Eagle’s Landing Country Club as LPGA players participate in the first round of the Chick-fil-A Charity Championship. Chaired by Chick-fil-A Senior Vice President of Marketing Steve Robinson, the symposium will include an address by Cathy and a question/answer period with attendees. The audience will include senior representatives and VIP guests from all the major sponsors of the LPGA tournament. As another part of its commitment to sponsorship, Southern Company Gas will provide volunteers for events throughout the tournament, from Hole Marshals to volunteers in the media center. Company employees will host an informational booth near the entrance of the venue.

Southern Company Gas’ involvement goes beyond the tournament itself into hands-on participation with one of the event’s beneficiaries, the East Lake Community Foundation. Southern Company Gas will sponsor the Foundation’s “Fun on the Fairway,” where women golf pros, business women and community leaders will play a 9-hole round of golf with young girls from East Lake’s Charles R. Drew Charter School, as well as talk to them about what it takes to succeed in business and in golf. The students are all participants in The First Tee of East Lake. Southern Company Gas employees also will spend time reading and sharing experiences with students at Drew Charter School, a K-8 neighborhood school of 770 students.

About Southern Company Gas Southern Company Gas, a subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), markets and distributes natural gas to residential and small commercial customers throughout Georgia. For more information about Southern Company Gas, please call 1-866-SOCOGAS (1-866-762-6427) or visit www.southerncompanygas.com.

About Southern Company

With more than 4 million customers and nearly 39,000 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 growing competitive generation company and a competitive retail natural gas 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 ranked the nation’s top energy utility in the American Customer Satisfaction Index five years in a row. 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.

About East Lake Community Foundation The East Lake Community Foundation was established in 1995 to help transform one of the nation’s most violent public housing projects into an award-winning mixed-income community. Drawing on the expertise and resources of public and private partners, the Foundation developed a new community which includes The Villages of East Lake, an apartment complex with half market-rate and half subsidized units; Charles R. Drew Charter School, the city of Atlanta’s first public charter school; the East Lake Family YMCA; Sheltering Arms Early Learning Center; and the Charlie Yates Golf Course, a public, 18-hole golf course that is home to The First Tee of East Lake, a year-round golf and mentoring program for East Lake youth. The Foundation’s mission is to help the families of The Villages of East Lake and the children of Drew Charter School break the cycle of poverty and build a better future for themselves through education, excellent affordable housing, job readiness and connections with the broader community. The East Lake model is working. Crime rates are way down, school test scores and property values are up and most adults in the East Lake community are now working. For more information, please visit www.eastlakecommunityfdn.org. ###