News Release Details

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 23, 2012-- Charles River Associates (NASDAQ: CRAI), a worldwide leader in providing management, economic, and financial consulting services, today announced that consultants in the firm’s Energy & Environment Practice assisted the Eastern Interconnection Planning Collaborative (EIPC) with economic consulting and electricity modeling as EIPC completed Phase 1 of an assessment of the potential future needs of the electric transmission infrastructure in the Eastern United States under a variety of different energy policies. The U.S. Department of Energy awarded funding to EIPC to prepare analyses of transmission options for the Eastern Interconnection under a broad range of alternative futures and to develop possible long-term interconnection-wide transmission expansion configurations in response to alternative electricity resource scenarios selected through a stakeholder process.

In December 2011, EIPC submitted a first-of-its-kind report entitled “Phase 1 Report: Formation of Stakeholder Process, Regional Plan Integration and Macroeconomic Analysis.” Phase 1, which was completed during 2010 and 2011, consisted of aggregating regional transmission expansion plans, performing interregional analyses, and conducting macroeconomic analyses on eight macroeconomic energy futures and more than 70 sensitivities around those futures. EIPC relied on a consensus based stakeholder process informed by these analyses to formulate three interconnection-wide system expansion scenarios to address policy, regulatory, and commercial questions of interest to stakeholders. CRA provided EIPC with simulation results for all futures and sensitivities using its integrated macroeconomic and electricity models.

“CRA is pleased to aid EIPC in providing economic analyses to inform planning analyses of the future U.S. electrical grid,” said CRA's President and Chief Executive Officer Paul Maleh. “Energy economists in our Energy & Environment Practice provided rigorous economic analyses of possible market outcomes, which will help shape discussions of the future energy structure of the Eastern United States. We look forward to working closely with EIPC on Phase 2 of this important infrastructure project.”

CRA's project team is led by consultants in the Energy & Environment Practice, including Vice Presidents Ralph Luciani and Aleksandr Rudkevich, and Senior Consultant to CRA Charles Trabandt. Other members of the project team include Barclay Gibbs, Pablo Ruiz, and Jake Zahniser-Word.

The report is available on EIPC’s website at: http://www.eipconline.com.

During 2012, Phase 2 of EIPC’s project will study potential transmission options to support the three resource scenarios selected by the stakeholders in Phase 1. CRA will provide additional economic consulting and modeling services to EIPC in Phase 2, including production cost modeling. A final Phase 2 report is expected in late 2012.

About CRA's Energy & Environment Practice

CRA's Energy & Environment Practice provides expert economic and business consulting services to a range of electricity industry clients around the world. With years of industry experience and exceptional strength in analytics, the practice's consultants offer management and economic expertise in every phase of the electricity production cycle—from fuel procurement to retail strategy—as well as hands-on experience helping clients manage market power, environmental policy, and regulatory issues. CRA has pioneered techniques and models that have become industry standards, including competitive market designs, efficient bidding mechanisms, creative financial transactions, and methodologies to assess market power.

About Charles River Associates (CRA)

Charles River Associates® is a leading global consulting firm specializing in litigation, regulatory, financial, and management consulting. CRA advises clients on economic and financial matters pertaining to litigation and regulatory proceedings, and guides corporations through critical business strategy and performance-related issues. Since 1965, clients have engaged CRA for its unique combination of functional expertise and industry knowledge, and for its objective solutions to complex problems. Headquartered in Boston, CRA has offices throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Detailed information about Charles River Associates, a registered trade name of CRA International, Inc., is available at http://www.crai.com.

Statements in this press release concerning project work for EIPC, the future business, operating results, estimated cost savings, and financial condition of the Company and statements using the terms "anticipates," "believes," "expects," "should," or similar expressions, are "forward-looking" statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based upon 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 due to many important factors. Such factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements made by the Company include, among others, the Company's restructuring costs and attributable annual cost savings, changes in the Company's effective tax rate, share dilution from the Company's stock-based compensation, dependence on key personnel, attracting and retaining qualified consultants, dependence on outside experts, utilization rates, factors related to its acquisitions, including integration of personnel, clients and offices, and unanticipated expenses and liabilities, the risk of impairment write downs to the Company's intangible assets, including goodwill, if the Company's enterprise value declines below certain levels, risks associated with acquisitions it may make in the future, risks inherent in international operations, the performance of NeuCo, changes in accounting standards, rules and regulations, changes in the law that affect the Company's practice areas, management of new offices, the potential loss of clients, the ability of customers to terminate the Company's engagements on short notice, dependence on the growth of the Company's management consulting practice, the unpredictable nature of litigation-related projects, the ability of the Company to integrate successfully new consultants into its practice, general economic conditions, intense competition, risks inherent in litigation, and professional liability. Further information on these and other potential factors that could affect the Company's financial results is included in the Company's periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company cannot guarantee any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievement. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any of its forward-looking statements after the date of this press release.

Source: Charles River Associates

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