Optimal Power Generation Investment: Impact of Technology Choices and Existing Portfolios for Deploying Low-Carbon Coal Technologies

In this paper we identify optimal strategies for the investment in power generation assets. The investments are characterized by multiple available technologies whose economic value is driven by a technology-specific combination of several underlying assets, such as the price of fuel, electricity, and CO2. The correlation between the development of those underlying assets allows for diversification and thus to reduce the overall risk by holding a portfolio of different technologies. This yields an investor-dependent strategy for the deployment of new energy generation assets. The modeling framework developed is based on stochastic real options analysis that enables to account for the additional value of waiting which arises from uncertain commodity price development. In the presentation, we increase the model’s complexity stepwise, in order to depict the influences of various aspects, as for instance the interaction of technologies, value of waiting, or modification of an existing power plant portfolio. We find that including the value of waiting in the decision process not only delays the investment but also leads to an asymmetric risk distribution which features a much lower probability for losses. In addition, the results where the value of waiting is incorporated are more robust with respect to a variation of the investor’s risk- and time-preferences compared to the results gained with the classical net present value model. Finally, we investigate the required market conditions needed for the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. We find that a carbon dioxide price of 60 e/tCO2 and an electricity price of 70 e/MWh is required in the year 2015 in order to reach a probability of at least 50% for the deployment of CCS in 2022.