Kevin Collins was named President and CEO yesterday.  His President's letter to Shareholders is titled, "Setting a Course for Success," and it outlines our strategy and goals for the future.  You can check it out here on our IR home page:

http://library.corporate-ir.net/library/80/804/80446/items/251889/evergreen_CEO_Letter.pdf

We've also posted a snapshot of our business development pipeline, to provide a little more color on the opportunities that we are pursuing for K-Fuel, on our IR home page at the lower right hand corner of the page.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=80446&p=irol-IRHome

Evergreen Energy will join the Russell Microcap™ Index when the Russell Investment Group reconstitutes its family of U.S. indexes on June 22, according to a preliminary list of additions posted on www.russell.com 

Membership in the Russell Microcap Index, which remains in place for one year, means automatic inclusion in the appropriate growth and value style indexes. Russell determines membership for its equity indexes primarily by objective, market-capitalization rankings and style attributes.

It's great to see Congress continue to embrace clean energy.  Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee passed its energy tax package by a 12-6 vote.  The package included an extension of Section 45 tax credits through 2013.  We'll continue to monitor progress of this legislation as it moves through the process.

By Kevin Collins, President and CEO

We were encouraged by details of The Energy Advancement and Investment Act released last night by the Senate Finance Committee. 

You can take a look at it here:

http://www.senate.gov/~finance/sitepages/leg/LEG%202007/Leg%20110%20061507.pdf

The proposed legislation supports a number of alternative energies including wind, solar energy, and clean coal. It promotes clean energy for America, and encourages businesses and consumers to make more efficient use of our resources.  For example, the proposal extends through December 31, 2010, placed-in-service deadline for refined coal to receive section 45 renewable production tax credits. We’ll continue to monitor this proposed legislation as it moves into debate next week.   

By Kevin Collins,  President and CEO

When I addressed investors at the end of April in our conference call, I said we would try to be as transparent as possible.  We try to give the public as much information as we feel is reasonable; of course, in light of the regulatory environment in which public companies operate, we cannot divulge every detail but we'll try to give you a broad enough picture so that you can make informed decisions.

By Kevin Collins, President and CEO

Plant operations at Ft. Union continue to improve.   This includes optimization of cycle times and running throughput tests.  I frequently meet with our plant staff and we review the day's successes and opportunities for enhancement.  It’s a drive for operating excellence, and Evergreen’s employees have accepted the challenge. 

The 500 ton per day threshold was achieved in April.  This was important because it met Bechtel's specification for gathering data for commercial plant design.

At the Ft. Union plant we have recently achieved capacity of approximately 75% on a limited basis on the B processor.   We are working to improve continuous operations at that level.   As is the case with many production facilities, we still occasionally take the processor down for scheduled outages to perform minor mechanical modifications and other functions for increasing reliability.  Capacity continues to ramp, and Evergreen is making refined coal for sale. 

Why does Evergreen need to do all this testing?  The company plans to build a lot of these plants, so it’s important to get it right at this stage.  As we talked about on our last conference call, Bechtel wants to see high levels of capacity on a sustained basis on the B processor.  These results will give us well vetted specifications to build new plants. 

In the meantime, product is going to customers, and we provided a little color on where some of it is going in our shipment update on June 6.  It's notable that as we continue testing, we are shipping the refined coal, and we have several customers that have taken repeat shipments.

By Kevin Collins, President and CEO

I'm often asked about our business development strategy.  We've designed our approach to meet the needs of our customers.  Evergreen has several business development teams that are working on different projects in parallel.  Many of them came directly from the power generating industry, have established contacts, and are familiar with the vetting process utilities undergo for new technology.  They have a combination of engineering and financial analysis expertise that they are applying to these projects. 

Strategically, we’re employing state of the art financial, O&M (operations and maintenance), and technical models that we’ve developed to help customers quantify and realize the full benefit of using K-Fuel®. These predictive models incorporate commodity forward curves and have proven to be excellent marketing tools.    

Our employees interface directly with their counterparts at our customer sites, which include individuals from operations, finance, fuels, strategy, and safety groups.  Our team has screened dozens of potential power plants that are candidates for K-Direct projects.   From that analysis , our team currently has about a dozen initiatives in various stages of development, across a number of utilities, industrial users, and independent power producers.  K-Fuel®  enhances the efficiency and compliance of power plants, and will deliver value to coal consumers throughout our industry.

By Ted Venners, Chief Technology Officer and Founder

As you know, I’ve been working closely with the team at the South Dakota School of Mines on the C-Lock project.  Recently they put K-Fuel under an electron microscope.  What you see here is approximately the width of a human hair.  Even at that level of magnification, you can see that the K-Fuel is much smoother and more uniform.  Our customers know that K-Fuel is a high quality coal, and here you can see it for yourself.