Company: SOJE
Filing Date: 2025-04-11
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0000092122-25-000036
Chunk: 11

Company: SOUTHERN CO
Filing Date: 2025-04-11
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 11
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 Proxy Statement7

#### Company Performance
| 4In 2024, our companies and foundations invested over $85 million in grants, sponsorships and impact investments across our territories.                                                                                                                                                                                         
 4Our operating companies also play leadership roles in economic development efforts across the states and regions where we operate. In 2024, our economic development groups supported initiatives that resulted in the announcement of more than 20,000 jobs and $14 billion of investment in our electric service territories. |

Leading Through Innovation

4 For more than five decades, Southern Company’s world-class Research and Development organization has remained at the forefront of innovation. The organization’s research portfolio spans technology development for energy production, delivery and use, and is facilitating our transition to a net-zero energy system.

| 4The National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC), funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) and other sponsors and managed by Southern Company, continues to advance CO2capture, conversion, and removal technologies. In 2024, the NCCC announced it surpassed 150,000 hours of technology testing, aiding the development of cost-effective and commercially viable carbon management technologies to reduce GHG emissions. Additionally, nine technology projects with a direct testing connection to the NCCC received DOE funding awards, demonstrating the facility’s role in progressing technologies from laboratory development to commercial deployment. The center also completed its first tests of direct air capture and cryogenic carbon capture technologies. 
 4In 2024, Georgia Power and Urbint were awarded EEI's Thomas F. Farrell, II Safety Leadership and Innovation Award for their partnership to create a revolutionary artificial intelligence-powered hazard recognition and reporting tool to enhance workforce safety.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
 4We continue to leverage innovative collaborations, including our partnership with Energy Impact Partners, the world’s largest utility-backed, clean tech investor coalition with over $4 billion in assets under management. In 2024, we piloted multiple innovative solutions across the Southern Company system to enhance customer value, modernize our business, and sustainably serve our growing communities.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   |

Innovating How We Work

4 Our people are at the center of our mission to provide clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy. How we do our work is just as important as what we do.

4 Throughout 2024, we challenged our leaders to think differently and evaluate how we operate as an enterprise. Through a collaborative ideation and review process, our leaders identified multiple opportunities to refine and align our Company strategy. This process offered an exciting