Charles River Associates' NeuCo Subsidiary and DOE Embark On First Clean Coal Power Initiative Project at Dynegy's Baldwin Energy Complex.

Energy Editors/Business Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 14, 2004

Charles River Associates Incorporated (Nasdaq: CRAI) today announced that its majority-owned NeuCo subsidiary, which provides optimization software solutions that reduce emissions and improve the performance of electric power plants, fully commenced its Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI) project, the first contract awarded by the Department of Energy (DOE) under this presidential initiative. The project entails the design and demonstration of an integrated optimization software system at the Baldwin Energy Complex in Southern Illinois, which is owned and operated by Dynegy Inc. (NYSE: DYN). The total size of the project has been increased, and the value of the DOE contract has risen from the $8.4 million announced in February 2003 to $8.6 million. The four-year, $19.1 million project is to be 55% funded by NeuCo and 45% funded by the DOE.

The integrated optimization software system being deployed by NeuCo includes combustion, soot blowing, selective catalytic reduction (SCR) operations, overall unit thermal performance and plant-wide profit optimization products. This initiative will include developing an integrated real-time software environment to coordinate critical plant sub-systems to optimize a unit's performance goals, and to coordinate multiple units to optimize a plant's business objectives. The expected benefits include improved operating efficiency and reliability, increased commercial availability and reduced emissions.

"The DOE & NeuCo demonstration initiative at the Baldwin Energy Complex is designed to streamline the processes we currently utilize in the generation of electricity, and has the potential to improve the efficiency and extract greater value from assets across the entire U.S. generating fleet," said Mark Maddox, DOE acting Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy. "We anticipate that the solutions developed through this initiative will lessen the environmental impact of plant emissions and enable electric power producers to reduce the cost of generating electricity. This is a win-win situation for energy producers, consumers and the environment."

The CCPI addresses the national challenges of ensuring the reliability of our electric supply while simultaneously protecting our environment. The Clean Coal Power Initiative is a billion dollar/multi-year cost-sharing partnership between industry and government to demonstrate and accelerate the commercial deployment of barrier-breaking technologies designed to substantially reduce pollution in coal-based power plants.

"Serving as the host site for the first CCPI project reflects our ongoing commitment to identify and utilize new technologies that will further reduce our nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, while improving our operating efficiency and reliability," said Alec Dreyer, President, Dynegy Generation

The new optimization products will be built on NeuCo's ProcessLink(TM) optimization technology platform, a proprietary software environment that is specifically designed to handle large-scale, diverse and distributed process optimization challenges. NeuCo's ProcessLink technology was first applied to combustion optimization at wall-, roof- and tangentially-fired fossil steam boilers, and has helped nearly 70 generating units throughout the United States to reduce NOx emissions by 10 to 30 percent and improve fuel efficiency by 0.5 to 1.5 percent.

"We are thrilled to partner with the DOE and Dynegy in this important initiative," said Curt Lefebvre, NeuCo's President and CEO. "The CCPI gives us the opportunity to accelerate the demonstration of our technology as an integrated optimization platform for all plant-level systems. This project will demonstrate that multiple optimization products and technologies, each working to optimize critical pieces of equipment, can be integrated into a single software architecture and coordinated to achieve common goals. It will lay the foundation for future portfolio-level optimization initiatives."

About Dynegy Inc.

Dynegy Inc. provides electricity, natural gas and natural gas liquids to customers throughout the United States. Through its energy businesses, the company owns and operates a diverse portfolio of assets, including power plants totaling more than 12,700 megawatts of net generating capacity, gas processing plants that process approximately 1.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day and nearly 38,000 miles of electric transmission and distribution lines.

About NeuCo, Inc.

NeuCo, Inc. provides artificial intelligence-based optimization software solutions that reduce emissions and improve efficiency, capacity and availability for electric power generators. In addition to its commercially successful combustion optimization system, NeuCo is designing a comprehensive suite of products that optimize both physical and business processes, and integrate them to achieve global business goals. The result is a real-time decision infrastructure for the enterprise that is able to adapt to the complex shifting operating objectives and constraints that power generators face every day. NeuCo is jointly owned by Charles River Associates Incorporated (Nasdaq: CRAI), Advanced Energy Systems and NeuCo employees. More information about NeuCo can be found on the company's Web Site at www.neuco.net.

About CRA 

Founded in 1965, Charles River Associates is an economics, finance, and business consulting firm that works with businesses, law firms, accounting firms, and governments in providing a wide range of services. CRA combines economic and financial analysis with expertise in litigation and regulation support, business strategy and planning, market and demand forecasting, policy analysis, and engineering and technology management. The firm is distinguished by a corporate philosophy of providing responsive, top-quality consulting; an interdisciplinary team approach; unsurpassed economic, financial, and other analytic skills; and pragmatic business insights. In addition to its corporate headquarters in Boston and international offices in Brussels, Dubai, London, Melbourne, Mexico City, Toronto, and Wellington, CRA also has U.S. offices in College Station, Houston, Los Angeles, Oakland, Palo Alto, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and Washington, D.C. More information about CRA can be found on its website at www.crai.com.

Statements in this press release concerning CRA's expected benefits from the DOE contract are "forward-looking" statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to a number of factors and uncertainties. Information contained in these forward-looking statements is inherently uncertain, and actual performance and results may differ materially. Such factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements made by the Company include competitive pressures, changes in customer demands or industry standards, adverse economic conditions, loss of key personnel, litigation, termination of the DOE contract for convenience or for cause, and other matters. Further information on factors that could affect CRA's financial results is included in its most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.