NRG, based in Princeton, New Jersey, is among the largest US power generators with a mix of plants fired by coal, natural gas, nuclear and oil, and two wind farms. The company also operates in Australia and Germany.

The National Carbon Capture Center, located in Wilsonville, Alabama, southeast of Birmingham, is scheduled to be fully operational in 2010. It is expected to be a focal point of national efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through technological innovation.

Southern Company, a large utility serving the Southeast, is manager and operator of the National Carbon Capture Center.

The center will conduct testing and analyses in a power plant setting, at a size large enough to provide meaningful performance data under real operating conditions to enable scale-up of the technologies.

Aside from Southern and NRG, other current partners include American Electric Power and Luminant, Arch Coal, Peabody Energy and the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit research organization.

David Crane, chief executive of NRG, says his company’s decision to join the center “will bring us closer to meeting the challenges of global climate change and transitioning to an environmentally sustainable energy future."

Several utilities including Duke Power are moving head on their own to test carbon capture and storage technologies in latest generation coal-burning power plants.

President Barack Obama has approved $1.07bn in Energy Department funding to help construct an estimated $2.4bn carbon removal and storage project known as FutureGen in Mattoon, Illinois.

Southern Company recently withdrew from a group of utilities and coal companies involved with FutureGen, citing concerns over project costs and scope.