[en] A key factor in developing a hydrogen based transport economy is to ensure the establishment of a strong and reliable hydrogen fuel supply chain - from production and distribution to storage and finally the technology to dispense the hydrogen into the vehicle. This paper will describe how the industrial gas industry is approaching the new market for hydrogen as an energy carrier and vehicle fuel, through the experiences of Air Products, one of the world's major industrial gas companies. It will show how the expertise built-up over the last 50 years in the production and handling of hydrogen will be essential in supporting early H₂ infrastructure build-up. It will also show the role that industrial gas companies play in developing some of the major pathways towards hydrogen, using natural gas, coal and renewable feedstocks among others. (authors)

[en] Commercial and industrial gas users can now buy gas from a plethora of new suppliers, and further developments are expected this year. This article reports on the state of the gas supply industry. (Author)

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[en] Electricity generation is forecast to grow in Asia over the next twenty years. This will bring with it a significant growth in demand for energy resources. Major Asian utility coal procurement strategy to date has aimed at securing a balance between two conflicting needs - security of supply and low cost of supply. Despite the oversupply of coal in the eighties, the two countries experiencing significant growth in demand, Japan and Korea, planned their fuel strategies to ensure security of supply. The supply shortage over the past two years has justified their forward thinking in keeping long term coal contracts in place. Changes are already happening. Recent developments are seeing a move towards the positive attributes of low ash/low sulphur coals appropriately focusing suppliers thoughts on the need in the future to develop and concentrate on environmentally attractive coals to achieve greater returns. Indeed, generally there is a trend in North Asia to demand coal with lower sulphur, and lower ash. The aim now should be to persuade consumers to amend the narrow benchmark view in favour of one that considers the value in use of a particular coal to the customer. The method of pricing thermal coals is also likely to be influenced by the liberalization of the electricity market itself. The introduction of competition amongst generators and the appearance and growth of the Independent Power Producers could well see further pressure on the current simplistic benchmark system. Those financing such projects will seek to reduce risk by every means possible and, in particular, will want to be confident of the long term security of coal supplies

[en] This report presents a world panorama of nuclear power for electricity generation purposes. The economic aspects, the fuel cycle market, the reactor technology development, as well as environmental aspects are presented. This report is updated annually and the present issue covers the situation up to December 1993. (F.E.). 196 refs, 23 figs, 28 tabs

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[en] During the last two decades, the natural gas industry has gone through drastic changes. On one hand, deregulation and customer choice have been introduced to the industry. On the other hand, technological advances have resulted in substantial growth of available gas resources. In short, deregulation coupled with increased availability of supply has changed the way market participants interact with each other and which avenues they take to become leaders. Many new opportunities for entry into the market have also been created. As a result, the tide of competition has not only turned against the financially strong giants of the past, but it has also turned against new entrants who are fast, flexible and market driven. Natural gas utilities companies have responded by improving their operational efficiencies through process re-engineering, organizational re-alignment, restructuring and strategic alliances or mergers. Deregulation of the electricity industry is expected to increase competitive pressures on the natural gas industry, thus causing even more of a decrease in natural gas prices. In the future, natural gas utilities must be able to improve their effectiveness by accurately forecasting demand and optimizing their own supply and delivery systems in such a way that costs are minimized without compromising the reliability of supply. The new frontier of competitiveness will ensure that structural changes in the industry are characterized by an effective management of the supply-demand relationship and the optimization of risks inherently a part of gas delivery

[en] This paper presents a fuel prices scenario generator in the frame of a simulation tool developed to support risk analysis in a competitive electricity environment. The tool feeds different erogenous risk factors to a wholesale electricity market model to perform a statistical analysis of the results. As the different fuel series that are studied, such as the oil or gas ones, present stochastic volatility and strong correlation among them, a multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedastic (GARCH) model has been designed in order to allow the generation of future fuel prices paths. The model makes use of a decomposition method to simplify the consideration of the multidimensional conditional covariance. An example of its application with real data is also presented. (author)

[en] This paper presents some evidence against the log-linear specification of the demand-for-oil function, as applied to aggregate data on developing countries. It is shown that the price of oil has a significant effect on demand in the short run but not in the long run. It is also shown that economic activity, as proxied by output or income, is the most important determinant of the demand for oil and that the elasticity of substitution vis-a-vis coal is extremely low