The CTRM Blog

Peter Fusaro’s Annual Green Trading Conference provides a superb forum to catch up on the issues and the people involved. This year, the 10th annual such conference, will focus on the following….

Anette Nordskog is Vice-President of Corporate Communications and Project Development for Navita Systems, where she is responsible for developing and deploying Navita’s green offerings to a fast-growing global trading market amongst other responsibilities. Most recently, she held the position of Green Portfolio Manager for Fortum Markets where she was responsible for optimising the value of Fortum’s external production portfolio in Norway. In 2008, Nordskog was elected to the board of RECS International, which works to lower trade barriers and promote a pan-European renewable electricity market. She is also a programme committee member for the 2011 RECS conference and a speaker in Copenhagen in 2009. I took some time to discuss with Anette recently the European Green Trading scene, the issues and the ETRM software landscape.

Yesterday I received a press release from Allegro regarding its “go live” at Repower (formerly Räetia Energie), an international energy company based in Switzerland that has implemented Allegro 8 to manage its emissions trading activities, and is extending the implementation to handle its power and natural gas trading. Repower will utilize allegro 8 as a single platform to manage the company’s complex trading operations across multiple commodities, locations, and trading floors throughout Europe. The announcement can be found here.

The U.S. power industry is all too familiar with trendy policies and ideas, oftentimes thrust upon it by outsiders with an agenda. However, there are trends that energy companies and their vendors would do well to follow closely over the course of the next year. One such trend in the United States is the regulation of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs). Climate change and energy are now intertwined as demonstrated by the following major legislation proposed in Congress in 2009:

• The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (passed by the House Representatives and stalled in the Senate) and
• The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act of 2009 (proposed and stalled in the Senate)

Greenhouse gas emissions have been receiving a lot of attention recently. Last week, President Barack Obama traveled to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and pledged a 17 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Meanwhile, other initiatives have taken place both within the US and in other regions of the world. At this time, despite continued uncertainties, we may well stand on the precipice of an era in which carbon becomes a globally traded commodity and in which companies, particularly energy companies, are forced to monitor, track, report and reduce their GHG and other emissions.