Arch Coal Joins National Carbon Capture Center

ST. LOUIS, May 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- 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.

SOURCE Arch Coal, Inc.

Deck Slone, +1-314-994-2717, or Kim Link +1-314-994-2936, both of Arch Coal,
Inc.