Energy trading

As energy trading refers generally to trade in different types of energy on the energy market . The commercial value of the various forms of energy fluctuates greatly both due to supply and demand as well as due to the properties of the substance.

Energy trading with various energy sources

electricity

Wood

In the industrialized nations, wood is hardly ever used as a sales good, as it can almost only be used as heating material. In developing countries wood is mostly collected by families, and sometimes it is traded in markets for money or other barter goods.

Since the price of crude oil has risen sharply on the world market , wood has also become more and more interesting in the renewable energy sector . In Germany and some other EU countries there are price indices for wood, for example in the form of wood pellets or as cut material. The prices have risen relatively at the same rate as those of oil.

Brown coal

Lignite is coal that not only has a high water content, but also has a low energy content compared to hard coal . For this, lignite can be extracted in opencast mines , especially in Germany, which creates cost advantages compared to the extraction methods for hard coal. Because transport is very expensive in relation to the energy content, most power plants are located near the storage sites . The power plants and the storage facilities often belong to the same energy company.

In Germany, around seven percent lignite is burned in households.

Hard coal

Hard coal is traded globally by states and individual companies as well as nationally by corporations. The main exporters of these goods are Australia , Indonesia , China , South Africa , Russia , Colombia and Venezuela . In the case of hard coal, the most important aspects are the ash content , the calorific value and the proportion of volatile substances as well as the sulfur content .

Hard coal is traded as steam and coking coal on various global markets.

Steam coal

The steam coal intended for use in power plants must have special qualities. It is in a substitution competition because it has to compete with other forms of energy that can also be used to produce electricity. The heat released during this process only plays a subordinate role here, as it can be used as district heating . Most German households are no longer heated with coal for health, environmental and convenience reasons. As a domestic fuel, hard coal was replaced primarily by the energy sources crude oil and natural gas. In many developing and emerging countries like China, a large part of the population still heats with coal. This leads to winter smog situations and acid rain , for example .

Coking coal

Coking coal is refined in coking plants into coke, which is needed for steel production. In contrast to steam coal, which mainly depends on the energy content, properties are required here that result in stable and large-sized coke (plasticity, fluidity, expansion and baking behavior). Coking coal is scarce worldwide and therefore considerably more expensive than steam coal. The price of coking coal also depends on the steel economy, so it falls in times of low demand for steel and increases in boom times.

oil

There is a worldwide trading market for the commodity crude oil, the so-called crude oil market . In addition, both oil and its derivatives are traded nationally. There is a partial monopoly on oil, as only a few other nations besides the OPEC countries, such as Russia, export oil. The oil price is primarily based on the relationship between supply and demand, which has risen sharply in recent years. Over the same period, however, the oil was not produced to the same extent, with the result that the price of oil almost doubled from, say, $ 40 per barrel in 2004 to $ 78 in 2006. The production costs are far below the price that is traded on the stock exchanges. However, a differentiation is necessary here too, since oil from Saudi Arabia, for example, is cheaper to extract than oil extracted from offshore platforms or extracted from oil sands .

The exchange rate to the US dollar has a major influence on the oil price. For example, if the dollar loses value against the euro, the euro countries have to pay a lower euro amount for their oil imports.

natural gas

Natural gas is currently the largest competitor for the energy source oil. It can be transported almost as easily as crude oil and also used decentrally, but it is also suitable for central energy converters. The largest consumers of natural gas are power plants (electricity generation), industry (heating) and households (also heating). The aviation industry is currently also relying on kerosene , a derivative of petroleum.

In Germany, crude oil has not been used to generate electricity since the late 1970s. However, it is being used increasingly for automobiles . The proportion of apartments heated with natural gas in Germany rose from 16 percent (1975) to 48 percent (2005).

The commodity natural gas, like oil, is subject to an oligopoly or monopoly structure on the part of the supplier, since it is only produced in fewer than 15 countries. The European economic area is mainly supplied with gas from Russia, Norway and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands and the Mediterranean region. In the case of natural gas, however, the creation of the infrastructure is more capital intensive, as it is network-tied. Natural gas is mostly transported via pipelines or by ships , here in compressed form, while crude oil is uncompressed by tankers .

The price formation for natural gas has grown historically and follows the price of oil with a delay of a few months. An essential difference to petroleum is the fact that petroleum is rarely sold through long-term supply contracts. Natural gas, on the other hand, is traded almost exclusively through volume contracts so that the enormous flat-rate costs of building the infrastructure can be covered at all.

literature

Hermann-Josef Wagner : What are the energies of the 21st century? - Race for the deposits . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-17274-0 .
Ines Zenke / Ralf Schäfer (eds.): Energy trading in Europe - oil, gas, electricity, derivatives, certificates , CH Beck, Munich, 3rd edition 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-63237-2 .
Ines Zenke / Stefan Wollschläger / Jost Eder (eds.): Prices and pricing in the energy industry: from calculation to implementation of prices for electricity, gas, district heating, water and CO2 . de Gruyter, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-035462-1 .