This morning I appeared on a panel at the annual JS Herold Pacesetters conference in Old Greenwich, Connecticut.  This conference always puts a unique spin on issues in the energy industry, and this year was no exception.  The event featured a Jimmy Buffet theme, and my panel was titled “Travelin’ Clean,” after one of his songs.  While I don’t consider myself a parrothead (as serious fans of Jimmy are known), and no margaritas were being served, it was nonetheless a great opportunity to discuss Evergreen Energy and K-Fuel^® in front of a large audience of key energy industry players.

I talked about how energy companies are trying to meet 21st Century environmental demands with 20th Century infrastructure, and there are few solutions.  Power plants owners are struggling to meet society’s expectation that electricity be generated in a cleaner, more efficient manner--today.  That’s why the energy industry is beginning really embrace K-Fuel^® Refined Coal.

Last week we announced that Bechtel Power Corp will be building our new plants.  Most utilities know and trust Bechtel as a major engineering, procurement and construction vendor, and their participation in our efforts is an important endorsement of our technology and another indication that K-Fuel^®’s time has come.

We continue to be in discussions with a number of US based coal consumers regarding K-Direct plants.  We’ve conducted several test burns and feasibility studies, with the goal to build K-Direct plants as our desired outcome. 

We continue to ship K-Fuel to industrial users of coal from our Ft. Union facility in Wyoming.  We have had several repeat customers report excellent results.

We also recently announced the signing of an agreement to proceed with China Power Investment (CPI), one of China’s five state-owned power generation companies, with the objective to build a K-Fuel^® coal refinery in Inner  Mongolia. 

We think this confluence of concern about the environment and efficiency leads right to us. Policy makers remain pre-occupied with leapfrog technologies like IGCC with CCS that are years away. As the technical and financial viabilities of these technologies continue to be researched, financial markets remain skeptical when, for example, they see that costs have risen 50% for the federal government's "Future Gen" clean coal project.  The realities are clear. Governments utilities and the financial community, whether in the US, China or elsewhere, are looking for near-term solutions. In today’s panel appearance I got the chance to talk about it again.