Mr. Steven J. Milloy, 12309 Briarbush Lane, Potomac, Maryland 20854, holder of 67 shares of Southern Company common stock, submitted the following proposal.

SUPPORTING STATEMENT
In 2020, Southern Company adopted the goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 for the electricity it generates. https://www.southerncompany.com/newsroom/clean-energy/plan-on-net-zero-carbon-emissions-goal.html
But as Carlyle Group executive Megan Starr recently stated, “Net zero is so far off as not to be relevant without near-term targets.” https:// www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-08/blackstone-pimco-stay-out-of-net-zero-group-even-after-concessions [bloomberg.com]
The reality of net zero is likely much worse than that. Since the United Nations began working on climate 30 years ago, manmade emissions of greenhouse gases have increased by about 50%. https://ieep.eu/news/morethan-half-of-all-co2-emissions-since-1751-emitted-in-the-last-30-years [ieep.eu]
The United Nations has stated that “global greenhouse gas emissions show no signs of peaking.” https://wedocs.unep.org/ bitstream/ handle/20.500.11822/26879/EGR2018_ESEN.pdf?sequence=10 [wedocs.unep.org]
Because of real-world cost constraints, grid reliability requirements and technological limitations, it’s not clear that any combination of wind, solar, batteries and other technologies can actually replace fossil fuel generation on a timeframe reasonably consistent with “net zero by 2050.” There is no revolutionary greenhouse gas-free energy technology in the foreseeable future. Carbon offsets and carbon capture and sequestration technology are also unproven means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions on a utility scale. Not surprisingly, no one has an actual workable, practical and realistic plan to reach net zero by 2050 – no utility or energy company, no public utility service commission, no grid operator, and no government regulatory agency. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a utility industry research [sic] group to which Southern Company belongs, has recently admitted in a report that “clean electricity plus direct electrification and efficiency... are not sufficient by themselves to achieve net-zero economy-wide emissions.” https://lcri-netzero.epri.com [lcrinetzero.epri.com] Moreover, EPRI has not even examined whether ESG is even feasible in terms of supply chain constraints, and operational reliability and resiliency. At best, corporate promises of net zero currently are pure fantasy. At worse, they are materially false and misleading. If Southern Company management has a different view and believes that “net zero” by 2050 is not a false and misleading promise, it should report to shareholders its actual progress toward, and ongoing feasibility of attaining “net zero by 2050.”