Electricity markets volatility: estimates,regularities and risk management applications

The recent deregulation of the market for electric power in many parts of the US and Canada has expanded the set of potential tools for managing the types of risks faced by both generators and consumers of electric power. In particular manufacturing and other firms whose operations are powered by electricity now face, on a continuing basis, the engineering management decisions concerning whether they should buy or produce electricity, and if they are to buy or sell electricity, what types of contracts are optimum. These types of risk management decisions typically involve futures, forwards, options and other financial derivatives. The price and volatility of electric power are known to play an essential role in determining which of these instruments should be used. However, electricity as a commodity possesses certain special features not shared by other commodities and hence its risk properties are not yet well understood. In this paper we consider and test certain hypotheses about the properties of electricity price using recent market data. We find that electricity prices possess certain volatility and other systematic properties that can be characterized by the type and method of delivery of electricity. These properties can be used by firms in formulating their optimal demand and supply schedules of electric power.     

Implications of carbon cap-and-trade for US voluntary renewable energy markets

Many consumers today are purchasing renewable energy in large part for the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions benefits that they provide. Emerging carbon regulation in the US has the potential to affect existing markets for renewable energy. Carbon cap-and-trade programs are now under development in the Northeast under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and in early stages of development in the West and Midwest. There is increasing discussion about carbon regulation at the national level as well. While renewable energy will likely benefit from carbon cap-and-trade programs because compliance with the cap will increase the costs of fossil fuel generation, cap-and-trade programs can also impact the ability of renewable energy generation to affect overall CO₂ emissions levels and obtain value for those emissions benefits. This paper summarizes key issues for renewable energy markets that are emerging with carbon regulation, such as the implications for emissions benefits claims and voluntary market demand and the use of renewable energy certificates (RECs) in multiple markets. It also explores policy options under consideration for designing carbon policies to enable carbon markets and renewable energy markets to work together.     

Carbon markets and low-carbon investment in emerging economies: A synthesis of parallel workshops in Brazil and India

While policy experiments targeted at energy and innovation transitions have not been deployed consistently across all countries, market mechanisms such as carbon pricing have been tested over the past decade in disparate development contexts, and therefore provide some opportunities for analysis. This brief communication reports on two parallel workshops recently held in Sao Paulo, Brazil and New Delhi, India to address questions of how well these carbon pricing policies have worked in affecting corporate decisions to invest in low-carbon technology. Convening practitioners and scholars from multiple countries, the workshops elicited participants' perspectives on business investment decisions under international carbon markets in emerging economies across multiple energy-intensive sectors. We review the resulting perspectives on low-carbon policies and present guidance on a research agenda that could clarify how international and national policies could help encourage both energy transitions and energy innovations in emerging economies.     

Designing carbon markets,Part II: Carbon markets in space

This paper analyses the design of carbon markets in space (i.e., geographically). It is part of a twin set of papers that, starting from first principles, ask what an optimal global carbon market would look like by around 2030. Our focus is on firm-level cap-and-trade systems, although much of what we say would also apply to government-level trading and carbon offset schemes. We examine the “first principles” of spatial design to maximise flexibility and to minimise costs, including key design issues in linking national and regional carbon markets together to create a global carbon market.     

Forward contracts in electricity markets: The Australian experience

Forward contracts play a vital role in all electricity markets, and yet the details of the market for forward contracts are often opaque. In this paper we review the existing literature on forward contracts and explore the contracting process as it operates in Australia. The paper is based on interviews with participants in Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM). The interviews were designed to understand the contracting process and the practice of risk management in the Australian energy-only pool market. This survey reveals some significant gaps between the assumptions made in the academic literature and actual practice in the Australian market place.     

Intra-day and regime-switching dynamics in electricity price formation

This paper analyses the complex, non-linear effects of spot price drivers in wholesale electricity markets: their intra-day dynamics and transient irregularities. The context is the UK market, after the reforms introduced in March 2001, analysed with an original set of price drivers reflecting economic, technical, strategic, risk, behavioural and market design effects. Models are estimated separately as daily time-series of the 48 half-hourly trading periods. All coefficients exhibit substantial intra-day variation, relating to the heterogeneity of operating plants and market design aspects. This reveals a market responding to economic fundamentals and plant operating properties, with learning and emergent financial characteristics, as well as some strategic manipulation of capacity, most effectively exercised by the more flexible plants. Using regime-switching parameters, the effects of capacity margin and inter-day capacity adjustment are elucidated, suggesting rent-seeking behaviour, despite the relatively low prices at the time. Overall, high-frequency, aggregate fundamental price models can usefully uncover critical aspects of market performance, evolution and agent behaviour.     

Modelling price and volatility inter-relationships in the Australian wholesale spot electricity markets

This paper examines the inter-relationships of wholesale spot electricity prices among the four regional electricity markets in the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM): namely, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria using the constant conditional correlation and Tse and Tsui's (Tse, Y.K., Tsui, A.K.C., 2002. A multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model with time-varying correlations. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 20 (3), 351–362.) and Engle's (Engle, R., 2002. Dynamic conditional correlation: a sample class of multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 20 (3), 339–350.) dynamic conditional correlation multivariate GARCH models. Tse and Tsui's (Tse, Y.K., Tsui, A.K.C., 2002. A multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model with time-varying correlations. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 20 (3), 351–362.) dynamic conditional correlation multivariate GARCH model which takes account of the Student t specification produces the best results. At the univariate GARCH(1,1) level, the mean equations indicate the presence of positive own mean spillovers in all four markets and little evidence of mean spillovers from the other lagged markets. In the dynamic conditional correlation equation, the highest conditional correlations are evident between the well-connected markets indicating the presence of strong interdependence between these markets with weaker interdependence between the not so well-interconnected markets.     

Designing carbon markets. Part I: Carbon markets in time

This paper analyses the design of carbon markets in time (i.e., intertemporally). It is part of a twin set of papers that ask, starting from first principles, what an optimal global carbon market would look like by around 2030. Our focus is on firm-level cap-and-trade systems, although much of what we say would also apply to government-level trading and carbon offset schemes. We examine the “first principles” of temporal design that would help to maximise flexibility and to minimise costs, including banking and borrowing and other mechanisms to provide greater carbon price predictability and credibility over time.     

How carbon credits could drive the emergence of renewable energies

The shift to renewable energy options and low-carbon technologies, in response to the concerns over energy security and climate change, is proceeding more slowly than many would like. The usual argument against rapid deployment of new technologies is the costs imposed on the economy, commonly interpreted in terms of upfront costs to be borne or involving large cash transfers to fund, for example, efforts to preserve rainforests. In this contribution I argue that such a perspective provides a continuing barrier to taking effective action, whereas a perspective based on creation and use of carbon credits provides a means of avoiding the shock of abrupt industrial change. Carbon credits granted for bona fide carbon load reductions could be created through private initiative, for example by merchant banks, to constitute a market that will complement regulatory-based initiatives such as national emissions trading systems. This is not a novel idea; indeed it is the way that capitalism has funded every major change, including the Industrial Revolution, through the creation of credit. The emergence of a global carbon credit economy is likely to precede a global regulatory system governing climate change and will doubtless help to stimulate the emergence of such a global system.     

A hybrid modelling approach to develop scenarios for China's carbon dioxide emissions to 2050

This paper describes a hybrid modelling approach to assess the future development of China's energy system, for both a “hypothetical counterfactual baseline” (HCB) scenario and low carbon (“abatement”) scenarios. The approach combines a technology-rich integrated assessment model (MESSAGE) of China's energy system with a set of sector-specific, bottom-up, energy demand models for the transport, buildings and industrial sectors developed by the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London. By exploring technology-specific solutions in all major sectors of the Chinese economy, we find that a combination of measures, underpinned by low-carbon power options based on a mix of renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage, would fundamentally transform the Chinese energy system, when combined with increasing electrification of demand-side sectors. Energy efficiency options in these demand sectors are also important.     

Impact of carbon cost on wholesale electricity price: A note on price pass-through issues

Carbon costs – either in the form of a carbon tax or through permit prices in an emissions trading scheme – would ultimately be reflected in higher electricity prices. Carbon cost “pass-through” is critical to the survival of existing coal generation assets and has been discussed widely as a measure of business impact in the electricity industry. This paper sets out in a structured way the factors that determine price pass-through and why this may differ greatly across different systems. Although the basic concept of price pass-through is simple, a clear understanding of the underlying factors is critical to developing insights on how carbon cost would impact on existing coal generation businesses. It is shown that pass-through can vary drastically if the underlying dispatch potential of generators varies significantly across alternative emissions reduction scenarios. It can also vary depending on the availability of competing cleaner forms of generation. Pass-through as a measure of business performance is, therefore, hard to generalize across different circumstances and should be interpreted carefully.     

OPEC's push into refining Dilemma of interactions between crude and product markets

This article shows that the interaction between the crude oil and the product market is not a symmetric phenomenon. A $1.00 change in the price of crude will change the price of the product by only $0.51 (in the short run), while a $1.00 change in the price of refined product will cause a $1.03 change in the price of crude (again, in the short run). The product market is much more sensitive to excess supply than the crude market. Excess supply in the product market will not only depress the price of refined oil, but will also lower the price of crude, with a more significant proportion. At present, the international oil market attempts to avoid the consequences of excess supply in the product market by some sort of subjective coordination of refining capacity utilization. The expected market, however, may change the picture for everyone in the industry — refiners, crude producers and OPEC.     

Sweet carbon: An analysis of sugar industry carbon market opportunities under the clean development mechanism

Bagasse power generation projects provide a useful framework for evaluating several key aspects of the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. On the positive side, our analysis, which draws in part from a data set of 204 bagasse electricity generation projects at sugar mills, indicates that these projects provide Annex I country investors with a cost-effective means to achieve greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Our analysis also confirms that the marketplace for Clean Development Mechanism-derived offsets is robust and competitive. Moreover, bagasse projects appear to provide a positive example in a “new wave” of clean energy investment that has replaced the earlier industrial gas projects. At the same time, we also identify two aspects of the CDM that demand improvement. First, the additionality standard needs to be tightened and made more transparent and consistent. Financial additionality should be required for all projects; however, any financial additionality test applied by the Clean Development Mechanism's Executive Board must be informed by the significant barriers faced by many projects. Second, the administrative processes for registration and verification of offsets need to be streamlined in order to prevent long registration time lags from chilling clean energy investment.     

Role of carbon swap trading and energy prices in price correlations and volatilities between carbon markets

The present paper theoretically and empirically examines the role of carbon swap trading and energy prices in volatilities and price correlations between the EU and Kyoto Protocol emissions trading schemes. A supply and demand based correlation model between EUA and sCER price returns is proposed in detail using inverse Box–Cox type marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves and simple emission reduction volume processes. The model includes financial players' EUA–sCER swap transaction in boom periods of carbon prices using the logit model for EUA and EUA–sCER swap volume correlations, and stronger energy price impacts on EUA prices than sCER prices using a mean-reverting lognormal process for energy prices. The empirical studies using EUA and sCER prices estimate the model parameters, resulting in a positive EUA volume impact on EUA–sCER swap transactions and a positive energy price impact on EUA prices. It is shown that high EUA–sCER price correlations during high EUA price periods stemmed from EUA–sCER swap transactions, whereas high EUA–sCER price correlations during the period of financial turmoil with low EUA prices came from the drop in energy prices. We also show that the leverage effects often observed in security markets exist in both the EUA and sCER markets according to the price–volatility relation.     

Internalizing carbon costs in electricity markets: Using certificates in a load-based emissions trading scheme

Several western states have considered developing a regulatory approach to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electric power industry, referred to as a load-based (LB) cap-and-trade scheme. A LB approach differs from the traditional source-based (SB) cap-and-trade approach in that the emission reduction obligation is placed upon Load Serving Entities (LSEs), rather than electric generators. The LB approach can potentially reduce the problem of emissions leakage, relative to a SB system. For any of these proposed LB schemes to be effective, they must be compatible with modern, and increasingly competitive, wholesale electricity markets. LSE's are unlikely to know the emissions associated with their power purchases. Therefore, a key challenge for a LB scheme is how to assign emissions to each LSE. This paper discusses the problems with one model for assigning emissions under a LB scheme and proposes an alternative, using unbundled Generation Emission Attribute Certificates. By providing a mechanism to internalize an emissions price signal at the generator dispatch level, the tradable certificate model addresses both these problems and provides incentives identical to a SB scheme.     

Modeling price-driven interactions between wood bioenergy and global wood product markets

Higher and more volatile liquid fossil fuel prices have had profound effects on international energy and wood product markets. Understanding this evolving economic and technological landscape requires economic models that capture the interconnections between energy markets and wood product markets, and can be used to forecast the impact of alternative policy and market incentives. The need for such an analytic framework is underscored by the consensus that efficiently produced wood bioenergy could provide many climate benefits compared to fossil-fuel intensive substitutes.A model is presented for analysis of how increased use of wood bioenergy, in the forms of fuelwood, cellulosic ethanol from woody biomass, and electricity produced from wood, might interact with global markets for wood products; liquid, solid, and gaseous fuels; and electricity produced from other sources. It links U.S. energy markets with wood product markets and endogenizes the demand for wood bioenergy with price-driven market clearing mechanisms. Projections made with the model point to a substantial increase in demand for woody cellulosic ethanol in the U.S. for the next 30 years if oil prices remain high.     

Path towards achieving of China's 2020 carbon emission reduction target—A discussion of low-carbon energy policies at province level

Following the announcement of the China's 2020 national target for the reduction of the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 40–45% compared with 2005 levels, Chinese provincial governments prepared to restructure provincial energy policy and plan their contribution to realizing the State reduction target.     

Social acceptance of carbon dioxide storage

This article discusses public acceptance of carbon capture and storage (CCS). Responses by citizens are described in relation to responses by professionally involved actors. Interviews with members of the government, industry and environmental NGOs showed that these professional actors are interested in starting up storage projects, based on thorough evaluation processes, including discussions on multi-actor working groups. As appeared from a survey among citizens living near a potential storage site (N=103), public attitudes in general were slightly positive, but attitudes towards storage nearby were slightly negative. The general public appeared to have little knowledge about CO₂-storage, and have little desire for more information. Under these circumstances, trust in the professional actors is particularly important. NGOs were found to be trusted most, and industry least by the general public. Trust in each of the three actors appeared to depend on perceived competence and intentions, which in turn were found to be related to perceived similarity of goals and thinking between trustee and trustor. Implications for communication about CCS are discussed.     

Renewable energy and the need for local energy markets

In Denmark, a technological change towards cleaner energy technologies has been developed and implemented since around 1975. This development has had two phases: The first from 1975 until around 1996, when wind power was a niche production that supplied only 3.5% of the electricity consumption and was brought close to cost competitiveness, and the present second phase, in which wind power supplies an increasing share (in 2004 18.6%) of electricity consumption along with combined heat and power plants, which supply around 50% of consumption. Denmark succeeded in overcoming the first phase, and a large green energy technology cluster was established. During the second phase, new difficulties and challenges have arisen, both with regard to local public acceptance and the need for integrating an increasing percentage of fluctuating energy sources into the energy system. In this Phase 2, a new offensive green energy policy should be introduced in order to secure both public and political acceptance. Local markets should be established in order to secure the technical integration of a large proportion of wind power and other fluctuating renewable energy sources into the energy system.