Investment appraisal of heat and power plants within an emissions trading scheme. Final Report of the INVIS Project

The opportunity cost for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions has become a new factor influencing investments in heat and power production capacity globally, and in particular in countries with a greenhouse gas emissions trading system, such as the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). There is a considerable power capacity investment need in the coming decades in Finland, in Europe and globally. As the economic lifetime of an investment in heat and power capacity typically ranges from 20-40 years, 'carbon finance' and the EU ETS therefore introduce a considerable and fundamental price risk to the investment problem. In Europe, the price risk is present in all investments and divestments of power production licences or capacity, be it a green-field plant, a retrofit of an existing plant or an acquisition. The objective of the INVIS research project was to extend the knowledge on strategic implications of emissions trading in investments into heat and power generation. This report gives an overview on the main findings of the project. The focus of INVIS project was on (1) quantitative investment appraisal and (2) methods rather than tools or parameter values. Particular attention in the INVIS project was paid to the incorporation of emissions trading in new methods of investment appraisal, which aim at taking into account the value of real options, rights to postpone or revise decisions. The EU ETS modifies the quantitative investment appraisal of heat and power plants directly through the emission allowance price and the number of free allowances and indirectly through impacts on output prices, input prices, taxation, and subsidies. From the risk perspective, the most problematic impact seems to be the regulatory uncertainty in the number of free allowances, which can turn out to be a barrier for investment in fossil-fuel-fired thermal power plants - even combined-cycle gas turbines. The emission allowance price is a stochastic variable, which implies it is necessary to modify any real-optio-based valuation of investments accordingly. The project results suggest that methods to consider the value of real options are not widely used in Finnish energy companies. The value of real options is not important in every investment. On the other hand, in the case of, for example, multi-fired thermal power plants the failure to incorporate real options may cause a systematic bias (as distinction to the unsystematic error caused by the uncertainty in e.g. electricity, fuel and allowance prices) of millions of Euros in quantitative investment appraisal