Southern Company, Number One! In failing grades, that is. Room for improvement in renewable energy.

Green America press release dated 24 May 2011, Southern Company Rated Worst of Seven Major U.S. Utilities: Southern Gets Straight “F”s in Grading of “The Dirty Seven” Utilities, Also Home to Three of 10 Worst-Polluting Power Plants in U.S.,

On the eve of Southern Company (NYSE: SO) holding its annual meeting of stockholders in Pine Mountain, GA., the nonprofit Green America released a report today ranking the major U.S. power producer as “the United States’ most irresponsible utility.”

Titled “Leadership We Can Live Without: The Real Corporate Social Responsibility Report for Southern Company,” the Green America analysis assigns letter grades to seven major U.S. utilities on four fronts: reliance on coal; pollution; reliance on and expansion of nuclear power; and lobbying expenditures. Southern came in dead last with straight “F” grades in all four of the categories.

The PR and the report have a lot more detail, such as this:

Clean Air Task Force data shows that Southern Company’s coal-fired power plants cause 1,224 deaths, 1,710 heart attacks, 20,770 asthma attacks, and 752 cases of chronic bronchitis per year. The total annual cost of all of this damage is over $9 billion.

Hey, that’s more than the original projected cost of the new nukes! Georgians, do you like trading your health for SO’s coal plants and its nuclear boondoggle?

Or would you rather Southern Company and Georgia Power spend less for more electricity by following Austin Energy and Cobb EMC into solar power, plus wind off the coast, for jobs, for energy independence, for health, and for profit?

-jsq