ATLANTA, July 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Southern Company is hosting the Electric Power Research Institute's (EPRI) annual "Joint CoalFleet for Tomorrow & CO2 Capture and Storage" meeting in Birmingham, Ala., July 26 – 28.  Experts, researchers and technology suppliers from more than 30 utilities and universities will review and showcase progress in carbon capture and storage (CCS) research.

Attendees will also tour the U.S. Department of Energy's National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC). Managed by Southern Company, the NCCC is the nation's testing center for the next generation of technologies to capture carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fueled power plants. At the NCCC near Wilsonville, Ala., attendees will visit the newly commissioned post-combustion capture pilot plant at Southern Company subsidiary Alabama Power's Plant Gaston and the pre-combustion capture slipstream unit at the nearby Power Systems Development Facility.

"Southern Company remains committed to developing carbon capture and storage technology because we believe 21st century coal must be a resource for the future," said Southern Company Chairman, President and CEO Thomas A. Fanning.  "Technology development is critical to keeping coal a part of our energy mix, along with nuclear, natural gas, renewables and energy efficiency, and we have one of the utility industry's few in-house research and development programs focused on CCS technology."

Southern Company is an industry leader in carbon capture and storage research and development.  In addition to managing the NCCC and successfully capturing CO2 at the facility, the company is/has:

• Demonstrating carbon capture on an existing unit of Plant Barry in Alabama. The project, the world's largest for a coal-fired generating plant, is currently capturing CO2 and ramping up to 150,000 tons per year for permanent underground storage.
• Building a commercial-scale, 582-megawatt generating plant in Kemper County, Miss., using local lignite and the company's Transport Integrated Gasification (TRIG™) technology, with 65 percent carbon capture and re-use.
• Researching promising new applications to the company's TRIG technology.
• Hosted a U.S. Department of Energy carbon storage demonstration project at Plant Daniel in Mississippi. About 3,000 tons of CO2 were successfully injected in an underground geologic formation.
• Successfully captured CO2 in a demonstration project at Plant Yates in Georgia.
• Drilling wells to assess geologic suitability for carbon storage at other power plants.

For more information on Southern Company's CCS projects, please visit:

http://www.southernco.com/planetpower/demonstration_carboncapture.aspx

With 4.4 million customers and more than 42,000 megawatts of generating capacity, Atlanta-based Southern Company (NYSE: SO) is the premier energy company serving the Southeast. A leading U.S. producer of electricity, Southern Company is the parent firm of electric utilities in four states and a growing competitive generation company, as well as fiber optics and wireless communications companies. Southern Company brands are known for excellent customer service, high reliability and retail electric prices that are below the national average. Southern Company was named the World's Most Admired Electric and Gas Utility by Fortune magazine in 2011, and is consistently listed among the top U.S. electric service providers in customer satisfaction by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Visit our website at www.southerncompany.com.

SOURCE Southern Company