Southern Company - Corporate Responsibility Report: Climate Change

The Southeast relies on combustion power plants for most of its power. We're researching carbon dioxide capture and storage to address associated climate change issues.

Climate Change Solutions

Climate change is a challenging issue not just for electric utilities and Southern Company but for our nation and the world. Leadership on this issue requires developing and deploying technologies that reduce greenhouse gases while making sure that electricity remains reliable and affordable. See our Climate Change Actions Map to find projects in progress across our service territory. Breakthroughs include:

Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage

Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of combustion. Southern Company is researching—with the federal government and other partners—how to capture and store carbon dioxide emitted from power plants to keep it out of the atmosphere. (See also DOE Carbon Sequestration Atlas and Climate Challenge Emission Reductions.)

The National Carbon Capture Center is a focal point of U.S. Department of Energy's efforts to develop advanced technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-based power generation. The Center, managed and operated by Southern Company in Alabama, works with scientists and technology developers from government, industry and universities who are creating the next generation of carbon capture technologies.
Kemper County Integrated Gas Combined Cycle Project, in Mississippi, will capture 65 percent of carbon dioxide to be sold for enhanced oil recovery. Kemper is the only IGCC plant in the U.S. that will capture and store carbon dioxide emissions the day it begins commercial operations. In addition, IGCC has fewer nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury emissions than traditional pulverized coal technology. (See TRIG sidebar)
Start-to-finish carbon capture and storage at Plant Barry in Alabama. When completed, the facility will be the largest in the world to be connected to a pulverized coal-fired generating plant. Alabama Power and Southern Company, along with the U.S. Department of Energy, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., the Electric Power Research Institute and other partners are building the project which will create about 50 construction jobs, and the capture and compression plant will require up to 15 full-time jobs during the life of the demonstration.
Other Carbon Projects:
A Stratigraphic test well to evaluate and characterize site-specific geology for carbon sequestration is at Alabama Power's Plant Gorgas.
Geologic sequestration, in partnership with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is evaluating the physical properties of rocks for geologic sequestration and training students in carbon sequestration science and engineering.
Deep underground saline reservoirs by injection of 3,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide and the subsequent monitoring of its movement at Mississippi Power's Plant Daniel, is progressing. Another project at Plant Daniel is studying the potential impacts of carbon dioxide on groundwater.
Injection of carbon dioxide into an unmineable coal seam in the Black Warrior Basin near Tuscaloosa, Ala., will help us learn more about both geologic sequestration and enhanced coal bed methane recovery.
A pilot injection of carbon dioxide evaluates the enhanced oil recovery and geologic sequestration potential of the Citronelle Field in south Alabama.

Also see Climate Change: A Summary of Southern Company Actions

Sulfur Hexafluoride

Carbon dioxide is neither the most widespread nor the most potent greenhouse gas. For example, water vapor is a greenhouse gas in higher atmospheric concentration while methane has a much stronger greenhouse effect.

Considerable progress has been made in controlling some anthropogenic (from human activity) greenhouse gases, like chlorofluorocarbons from refrigeration. Another lesser known gas, sulfur hexafluoride, has been a focus of Southern Company's attention. Sulfur hexafluoride has more than 20,000 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide on a pound-for-pound basis.

Southern Company has about 500 transmission substations with 1,740 breakers that use sulfur hexafluoride for its essential insulating properties. By joining a voluntary EPA program to reduce sulfur hexafluoride emissions by better detecting and repairing leaks, Southern Company has made progress in reducing sulfur hexafluoride releases.

Measures taken have reduced emissions from nearly 64,000 pounds in 1993 to under 20,000 pounds per year today. We're looking to lower sulfur hexafluoride emissions to under 10,000 pounds per year with new measures during this decade.

Performance

Other Southern Company efforts lowering carbon dioxide emissions:
Renewables | Energy Efficiency | Nuclear Power

Reducing Carbon Dioxide Through Efficiency Programs

EarthCents programs reduce electricity consumption and consequently lower carbon dioxide emissions. More on EarthCents.

Achievable Long-term Goals

With other members of Edison Electric Institute, an association of shareholder-owned electric companies, we support climate change framework that calls for an 80 percent reduction of carbon emissions from current levels by 2050 and also recommends to Congress a unified industry position for allocating emissions allowances distributed to the utility sector under potential cap-and-trade legislation. Details on climate change position »

TRIG^TM Clean Coal Technology

Over the past decade, Southern Company, with the Department of Energy and other partners, has been developing cleaner, less expensive, more reliable methods for power production from coal.

Rather than burning coal directly to make electricity, we're breaking coal down into chemical components. Impurities can be removed from the coal before it is fired, avoiding some emissions. Gases that result from this chemical breakdown can fuel integrated gasification combined cycle power plants, which are more efficient and therefore cleaner than current ones.

Now we've taken gasification one step further, a new process, called Transport Integrated Gasification, uses air rather than pure oxygen—and lower-grade sub-bituminous and lignite coals—to more affordably gasify the coal.

TRIG and other technologies developed at the National Carbon Capture Center will also make carbon dioxide capture and geological storage cheaper than capture and storage at existing coal-fueled plants. Look for TRIG to be used in the 582-megawatt gasification plant in Kemper County, Miss.