Electricity is not storable. As a consequence, electricity demand and supply need to be in balance at any moment in time as a shortage in production volume cannot be compensated with supply from inventories. However, if the installed power supply capacity is very flexible, variation in demand...

This paper uses a dynamic optimization model to estimate the welfare gains of hedging against commodity price risk for commodity-exporting countries. We show that the introduction of hedging instruments such as futures and options enhances domestic welfare through two channels. First, by...

This paper uses a dynamic optimization model to estimate the welfare gains of hedging against commodity price risk for commodity-exporting countries. The introduction of hedging instruments such as futures and options enhances domestic welfare through two channels. First, by reducing export...

This paper provides insight in the time-varying relation between electricity futures prices and fundamentals in the form of prices of contracts for fossil fuels. As supply curves are not constant and different producers have different marginal costs of production, we argue that the relation...

The European Union Trading Scheme (EU ETS) gives emission allowances a market price and are a marginal cost factor for those power plants that run on polluting fuels. Power plants have these costs in mind when they determine the selling price of their output. Being sold on a market place, it...