ST. LOUIS (May 27, 2009) - Arch Coal, Inc. (NYSE:ACI) today announced it has joined the National Carbon Capture Center as a corporate partner and advisory member alongside several of its major customers, including Southern Company, American Electric Power and Luminant.

The National Carbon Capture Center is a partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and leading energy companies to develop and test advanced technologies to capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) from coal-based power plants.

The center is located at the Power Systems Development Facility (PSDF), a research and development complex south of Birmingham, Ala. It will be managed and operated by Southern Company.

"As a partner in the National Carbon Capture Center, we will help drive new energy technologies that will allow the United States to meet both its environmental and economic goals," said Steven F. Leer, Arch Coal's chairman and chief executive officer. "We look forward to working alongside foremost energy experts to unlock a cleaner energy future for our planet."

The center will work with scientists and technology developers from government, industry and academia who are creating the next generation of carbon capture technologies. 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.

The National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC) plans to conduct testing on both pre-combustion and post-combustion carbon capture technologies. Existing facilities at the PSDF will be modified to conduct the pre-combustion CO₂ capture component of the NCCC project. New facilities to conduct post-combustion testing and evaluation will be on the site of Plant Gaston, a coal-fueled generating plant adjacent to the PSDF that is operated by Southern Company subsidiary Alabama Power.

Once fully operational in 2010, the NCCC will bring together science and innovation in technology development, along with real-world testing capability, to play a leading role in the effort to achieve cost-effective and reliable capture of carbon dioxide from coal-based power generation.

St. Louis-based Arch Coal, Inc. is one of the nation's largest and most efficient coal producers. Through its national network of mines, Arch Coal provides the fuel for approximately 6 percent of the electricity generated in the United States. Arch recently has pledged a total of $8 million to university research and public-private projects to advance the next generation of clean coal technologies.