Financial risks for green electricity investors and producers in a tradable green certificate market

This paper analyzes financial risks in a market for tradable green certificates (TGC) from two perspectives; existing renewable producers and potential investors in new renewable electricity generation capacity. The equilibrium pricing mechanism for a consumer-based TGC market is described and a market with wind turbines as the sole renewable technology is analyzed. In this framework, TGC prices and fluctuations in production from wind turbines will be negatively correlated and, as a result, TGC price fluctuations can actually help decrease the total financial risk. Based on this recognition, analytical expressions for revenue-variance-minimizing trading strategies are derived and an analysis of the demand and supply for financial hedging is used to show that forward contracts will be traded at a risk premium. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.