Improving Air Quality

Georgia Power is committed to meeting Georgia's growing energy needs while preserving the environment. We are currently in the midst of a $7 billion program to equip our coal-fired power plants with the latest environmental controls to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide nitrogen oxides and mercury. We also are moving forward with plans to expand our nuclear generation and exploring cleaner ways to produce electricity.

Sulfur Dioxide
In 2008, the mammoth construction program yielded the first scrubbers, sophisticated equipment that reduces SO₂ emissions by as much as 95 percent. Scrubber operations started commercially at Plant Bowen in May 2008, with subsequent startups at Plants Hammond and Wansley. By late 2014 when the last scrubbers are scheduled to begin operations at Plants Branch and Yates, more than 93 percent of Georgia Power's coal-fired generation - or 11,000-plus megawatts - will be scrubbed.

The scrubbers help Georgia Power comply with federal Clean Air Act restrictions on emissions of SO₂, a contributor to acid rain, fine particulate matter and limited visibility in national parks and wilderness areas.

Nitrogen Oxides
Georgia Power also has made a significant investment to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides. By 2015, this investment will reduce NO_X emissions by 85 percent from 1990 levels. To achieve these results, Georgia Power operates selective catalytic reduction systems (SCRs) at Plants Bowen, Hammond and Wansley. Additional SCRs will be installed at Plants Scherer, Branch and Yates starting in 2010.

The SCRs are similar to catalytic converters in automobiles. They work by adding ammonia to the emissions exiting through the boiler. A catalyzed chemical reaction breaks the nitrogen oxides down to harmless nitrogen and water.

At Plant Bowen, one of the nation's largest coal-fired generating plants, SCRs have reduced NOx emissions by 85 percent. It gives Bowen one of the lowest levels of NOx emissions for any plant its size in the world.

Mercury
The combination of scrubbers to reduce SO2 and SCRs to remove NOx also will remove significant amounts of mercury from the plants where they are installed. We estimate that most plants with scrubbers and SCRs will see reductions of about 80 percent in mercury emissions. In addition, Georgia Power recently began operating the first of four baghouses that remove mercury from coal emissions at Plant Scherer near Macon. Mercury is found only in trace quantities in coal and is present in flue gas mostly as a vapor.

Baghouses basically act as enormous vacuum cleaners to filter out solid particles, so additional solids like activated carbon can be injected into the baghouse to capture mercury from the gas and reduce emissions substantially. The emission gases that go in are filtered through fabric bags that are 26 feet, 4 inches long and 5 inches in diameter. Each baghouse contains 24 compartments, with 840 bags per compartment, or 20,160 total.

Replacing Coal with Natural Gas
Georgia Power plans to convert the 1960s vintage coal-fired Plant McDonough into a bigger power plant that uses natural gas. The conversion will replace 540 megawatts of coal-fired generation with more than 2,500 megawatts of natural gas generation - enough to supply 625,000 homes. Switching to natural gas will improve air quality significantly in metro Atlanta. It will reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides by 85 percent, sulfur dioxide by 99 percent and mercury by 100 percent. The plant's rate of carbon dioxide emissions also will decrease by 50 percent.

Conceptual photo of Plant Vogtle with Units 3 and 4 added.

Adding Zero Emission Nuclear Power
To meet Georgia's growing demand for electricity, Georgia Power is moving forward with plans to build two additional nuclear units at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant near Augusta. The two approximately 1,100-megawatt units should come on line in the 2016-2017 time frame. Nuclear power is cost-competitive, clean and offers fuel diversity to the company's generation mix, which is currently dominated by fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. It has the added benefit of no air emissions, including carbon dioxide, which is increasingly important in light of concerns about climate change and global warming. Georgia Power has safe, reliable on-site options to store the used fuel at our nuclear plants. Read more.

Planting Trees
Technology solutions are not the only way Georgia Power improves air quality. The company also has planted more than 1.4 million trees across the state over the past five years, removing almost 19 million pounds of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere in the process. Read about the Longleaf Legacy program.