Dear Fellow Stakeholders:

Our primary responsibility as an electric utility is to keep the lights on at an affordable cost for our customers — the homes and businesses we serve here in the Southeast. That's expected. And I think we've done that — and continue to do that — as well as anyone in our industry.

I also believe more is expected of us today and should be. We can't rest on our past successes or performance. We must continually seek ways to better ourselves, to improve on how we make electricity, how we deliver it and how we sell it. Those who depend on that energy and those who invest in our business deserve that kind of commitment.

Again, I believe Southern Company is one of the best anywhere at meeting that commitment.

For one, we've been operating nuclear power plants safely and reliably for more than 40 years, and now we're out front to become the first utility to build new nuclear generation in the U.S. in some 30 years, using the latest, state-of-the-art technology.

We began early site work for two new units in Georgia last year and became the first utility to receive a commitment for a federal loan guarantee as announced by President Obama earlier this year. Both those actions, in my view, are a testament to our company's track record and show a confidence in our ability to usher in new technologies.

We've also historically used a diverse mix of resources for generating electricity. That hasn't changed. We continue to see the need for maintaining a variety of options, including coal. Today, we manage and operate the U.S. Department of Energy's National Carbon Capture Center in Alabama, a one-of-a-kind research facility. The Center develops advanced technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We've already developed, with DOE and other partners, an advanced technology for turning coal into a synthetic gas for use in generation — a technology we've shared overseas in China and plan to use ourselves in a 600 megawatt coal gasification facility in Mississippi.

Renewable energy continues to occupy a bigger piece of our energy pie. We've broken ground on what will become one of the largest biomass plants in America, and we announced earlier this year plans to acquire and build one of the largest solar facilities to date, an outgrowth of a partnership we've forged with Turner Renewable Energy, owned by Ted Turner.

We also remain among the leaders in improving upon the way we deliver electricity to the consumer, developing technologies to do that more efficiently and less costly. The name that's often used for this is "smart grid." As a piece of that effort, we're installing more than 4 million "smart meters," which will allow us to take hundreds of vehicles off the road normally used for meter reading, as well as help consumers better manage their energy use with more real-time information. We're presently halfway to our goal.

Finally, as part of our "smart" initiatives, we remain focused on giving our customers choices on how they use electricity to make their lives better and do so in an affordable way. We're increasing our investment in energy efficiency programs, earmarking $1 billion over the next decade so our customers can save dollars on their bills and make better decisions about their electricity use.

But none of this would matter if our first priority wasn't safety for our employees and the public. Our generating plants maintain an industry-leading reliability rating, and our transmission and distribution organization recorded their all-time best reliability performance in 2009. And we continue to work toward our goal of no accidents or injuries with our Target Zero program.

Finally I'd like to note our role as citizens. Our economic development efforts have led to thousands of jobs in the Southeast. Community programs like Project SHARE have helped families strapped by economic times pay utility bills. And our wildlife and habitat stewardship programs support notable programs including one to bring back the whooping crane and another to restore the longleaf pine forest.

The bottom line is we take responsibility for more than just keeping the lights on. We work every day to find ways to do it better, keep our people safe, play an integral part in the communities in which we live and protect our environment for generations to come.

We thank you for your interest in our work and encourage you to read on. Your thoughts and comments are welcome. You can reach us at .

David M. Ratcliffe