GenOn Energy, Inc.

[exisnet]

HOUSTON, Jun 23, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Reliant Energy announced today that it is investing approximately $50 million to reduce mercury emissions at five Pennsylvania coal-fired generating plants. The investment will allow removal of at least 80 percent of the mercury content of the coal burned at Shawville, Portland, Conemaugh, Titus and New Castle stations. Together with existing and already committed controls at other units, this investment will ensure Reliant's fleetwide compliance with Pennsylvania's Phase 1 Mercury Regulations.

Installation of these emission control systems that clean the air through activated carbon injection will begin in the first quarter of 2009 and will be completed by December 2009. The Mer-Cure(TM) Sorbent Injection Systems are designed by Alstom, an international leader in air quality control and environmental protection systems.

"We are committed to environmental stewardship and have developed a comprehensive program to reduce our environmental footprint," said Mark Jacobs, Reliant Energy president and chief executive officer. "The mercury removal plan announced today will improve air quality for our neighbors and is an important element of our overall program."

Reliant Energy operates 19 power plants in Pennsylvania and employs more than 1,000 people in the state. At these Pennsylvania locations, Reliant is investing more than $435 million in emissions control related improvements. In addition to the investment in mercury emissions reduction systems announced today, Reliant is investing $375 million at the Keystone and Cheswick plants to install scrubber systems to remove sulfur dioxide that will be completed in 2009, and more than $10 million in upgrades to the existing scrubbers at the Elrama station.

The scrubber installations at Keystone and Cheswick, in addition to existing selective catalytic reduction systems for control of nitrogen oxides, are expected to bring these two plants into compliance with the Pennsylvania Phase I Mercury Regulations. They will also comply with the plant-wide mercury removal requirements of the Pennsylvania Phase II Mercury Regulations more than five years before those requirements take effect in 2015.

Reliant Energy, Inc. (NYSE:RRI) based in Houston, Texas, provides electricity and energy services to retail and wholesale customers in the United States. The company provides service to approximately 1.8 million retail electricity customers primarily in Texas, including residential and small business customers. Reliant also serves commercial, industrial, governmental and institutional customers in the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Delaware, Washington, D.C. and New York.

The company is one of the largest independent power producers in the nation with approximately 16,000 megawatts of power generation capacity across the United States. These strategically located generating assets utilize natural gas, fuel oil and coal. For more information, visit http://www.reliant.com.

Alstom is a global leader in the world of power generation and rail infrastructure and sets the benchmark for innovative and environmentally friendly technologies. Alstom builds the fastest train and the highest capacity automated metro in the world, and provides turnkey integrated power plant solutions and associated services for a wide variety of energy sources, including hydro, nuclear, gas, coal and wind. The Group employs 76,000 people in 70 countries, and had orders of EUR 23.5 billion in 2007/08.

This news release contains "forward-looking statements" that contain projections, estimates or assumptions about our capital expenditures. In many cases you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "intend," "may," "plan," "will," "expect," and other similar words. However, the absence of these words does not mean that the statements are not forward-looking.

Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by forward-looking statements as a result of many factors or events, including, but not limited to, regulatory developments and approvals, legal, governmental and bankruptcy proceedings, financial market conditions, access to capital, changes in commodity prices and interest rates, and other factors we discuss or refer to in the "Risk Factors" section of our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE: Reliant Energy