能源价格风险和“曲棍球棒PPA”

在2015年11月，140名多名学员在企业的可再生能源市场聚集在纽约市。

They一起来了RMI公司的旗帜下Business Renewables Center（BRC），基于成员的平台，加速企业的可再生能源采购。去年，BRC-附属公司占交易的88％。

But to keep the market growing, remaining barriers must be removed. And according to the participants at the November conference, the most significant barrier is risk allocation — by a wide margin.

Of all the conceivable risks that are embedded in apower purchase agreement (PPA)交易，市场价格风险普遍提及的主要障碍成功完成交易。市场价格风险是指市场价格比PPA的生活相关的不确定性。

The current contractual convention transfers the market price risk, in its entirety, from the financier, via the developer, to the off-taker in the form of a fixed price, often adjusted by a pre-defined price escalator. This convention relies on the rationale that the lender needs to secure specific debt-coverage ratios, while the equity investor meets a desired equity return.

然而，这种传统结构PPA可能不适合每个买家的独特风险偏好。这是因为买家有各种形状和大小，和市场价格风险由他们每个人的耐受性不同。

Understanding risk exposure

The differences in buyers’ market positioning, and therefore risk appetites, may be conceptualized along two dimensions.

首先，竞争对手少的买家可先关注其固定的能源成本，使之成为一个已知的，可预见的，稳定的变量，即使这意味着消除潜在的实现更低的价格。

If a buyer ends up 'long and wrong,' that buyer receives a fixed price while the market enjoys lower prices.

在竞争激烈的行业需求，而另一方面，可能有兴趣在更紧密地管理（即降低）其相对的能源成本，以确保成本竞争力。

第二个维度是能量强度，即，能量成本占总生产成本的一个百分比。

Energy-intensive industries will be more sensitive to the gap between the PPA price and the market price, because that price will have a larger impact on their total production cost.

不同的风险偏好：一个尺寸不适合所有

现实情况是，许多当前和未来的买家在都是高能耗的，高竞争力的部门工作。对他们来说，PPA是不是一个固定的能源价格更多：它必须符合他们的唯一定义的风险承受能力。

The problem is that a plain vanilla, fixed-price PPA implies a risk not every off-taker is willing to assume. This type of deal has been dubbed the “Hockey Stick PPA,” because the off-taker’s goal of managing their relative and absolute energy costs, as described above, is only achieved if the market price follows a trajectory that bends upward like a hockey stick, that is, an incrementally increasing trajectory.

下面的图表说明了这一概念，以表示对长期能源价格常用提供预测的蓝线。有人可能会认为，做多以固定价格“采取避险表”，但现实情况是，一个人简单地更换为另一个（价格下跌）一个风险（价格上涨）。

如果买家结束了“长错”，即买家收到一个固定的价格，而市场上享有更低的价格，从而为中长时间处于竞争劣势。同样，这可能是一些公司可以接受的，但对于大多数，它可能最终做弊大于利。

So what is often presented as an easy way around market-price risk allocation turns out only to be effective if all the off-taker wants is to “fix and forget” its energy cost.

The risk, of ending up with a PPA price that is more expensive than the market price of the commodity, is still present. As with any commodity transaction, market risk is inherent in renewable PPA transactions, too.

Lessons from other commodities

Fortunately, in businesses with significant commodity exposures — such as the chemical industry or the food processing industry — financial market risk management techniques to quantify, understand, and manage these risks have been successfully applied for decades. Companies in these industries understand the necessity of calibrating their risk tolerance and hedging horizon.

举个例子，一家公司可能决定它没有食欲承担超出其行业的领导者（和对手）的风险，使他们选择相同的对冲地平线行业的领导者。对冲他们的商品曝光以后，他们的对手暴露了公司在大宗商品成本的形式竞争劣势的风险，如果达到其竞争对手的视野后，市场下跌。

什么在传统大宗商品工作也适用于可再生能源。市场风险的一个基本的认识一直是一个优势商品密集型企业。

什么在传统大宗商品工作也适用于可再生能源。

市场风险管理的专业知识可以帮助表现良好的结构可再生能源交易，无论市场方向。通过了解交易的风险状况以及卖家，就可以创建一个结构，是对双方互利。

Mars公司是近期在申请商品风险管理方面的丰富的文化遗产，开发新的交易结构，即股市场风险的公司的例子。

Brice Russell, Mars, Inc.’s global chief procurement officer, shared his experience: “Clearly, many companies strive to include the supply of alternative energy but this does not mean that you give up financial prudence. We treat the approach of securing alternative energy the same way we approach our other commodity purchases; what is the risk associated with the transaction, do we have the right financial approach, and does it deliver what we need? By probing and asking the right questions, we found flexible partners who worked with us to find a way to complete a deal that gave us our desired risk profile.”

Beyond common misconceptions

这是积累知识的重要，与其他商品不同借款如果需要的话，以消除那些不会服务于可再生PPA市场以及一些常见的误解。

One widespread argument is to present a PPA as a hedge against energy-consumption price risk. A hedge is defined as an offsetting position in a related instrument, in this case, the PPA price. For the PPA to truly be a hedge, the cash flows from the PPA (the buyer’s long position) would need to offset the cash flows at the designated load centers (the buyer’s short position).

有很多，其中PPA本身，不会对冲买方的空头仓位情况：想象一下，例如，一个极端的方案，其中电力价格一直很高时，有没有产生，以及低的时候有足够的一代。在这种情况下，有很高的可能性，买方的消费成本不会直接从风力发电的收入抵消。

幸运的是购买者，一PPA的作为避险性能可以定量评价，与广泛使用和接受的对冲有效性测试。统计证据要么明确支持或反对的观点，即PPA是一个对冲。

另一个普遍的看法是，可再生电力采购协议提供针对长期能源通胀和波动性，往往是基于长达20年的电价预测保护。

除了使用预测的，最好是依靠一系列的方案，以帮助了解所有合理的，即使不可能的，结果为了不测做好准备 - 例如，天然气价格保持在创纪录低水平;电力价格一路或在长期内崩溃;零售价格上升，但批发价格下降;等等。没有人愿意要解释的CFO为什么按计划进行的交易并不如表现积极。

有许多替代结构，以固定价格PPA（与升级），这些是值得考虑的，其中企业买家可以与卖家分享市场的价格风险，而不是充分吸收它。

共享能够以这样的方式，一方面，卖家仍然可以资助他们的风能和太阳能资源，而不必市场价格风险的企业买家进100％的结构化;而在另一方面，买家可以依靠的工具是其特定风险承受能力量身定做。

该公司的可再生能源市场有以惊人的速度扩大在过去的几年中;在BRC及其成员希望看到继续。市场的增长可能面临能源价格不断下降的情况下逆风。

The possible negative impact of future low energy prices on the financial performance of PPA transactions over the long term calls for greater rigor in analyzing, structuring, and negotiating these agreements. As more market-risk experts come to the deal table, the availability of innovative options and structures to manage risk will help accelerate the industry’s reach and growth.

The bottom line is that the hockey stick PPA may not work for everyone: a wider array of options is needed in order to accommodate the complexity of each corporate’s risk appetite.