The Impact of EU ETS Price Variations on Germany's Electricity Production Mix

Motivated by the initiation of the third EU ETS trading period in January 2013, this paper examines the effects of EUA price variations on the electricity mix. We focus on the German electricity market, since it is one of the most important EU electricity markets. In this context, we formulate a simulation model for the scenario years 2011 2020, and 2030 as MCP and compute results utilizing GAMS. Our results indicate that the ability of EUAs to influence the production mix starts at EUA price levels that have not often been observable in the EU ETS until today (i.e. > €25-35/ton) and that in order to reach Germany's future RES-E target shares, EUA price levels of €40 (2020) and €45 (2030) are sufficiently high enough according to our model