Forecasting the Prices of Wood Pellet Fuel in Japanese Power Stations

As the world transitions to a more decarbonized future, policies that support the substitution of renewable energy for fossil fuels have proliferated. The details of individual country policies vary but the net result is to provide incentives to emit less CO2 per megawatt-hour of power generated. While wind and solar are the most commonly recognized form of renewable power generation, upgraded solid fuel in the form of wood pellets can substitute for coal in utility power stations. For that reason, wood pellets have become an important and major component of a sustainable and reliable power grid. For example, in the UK, wood pellet generated power averaged about 13% of the baseload supply from April 14 -20 and averaged almost 10% of the baseload over the past year. One of the countries that is using wood pellets in place of coal is Japan. Japan has become a major importer of wood pellets. Demand is expected to grow from 1.6 million metric tonnes in 2019 to about 9 million tonnes by 2030. This webinar will describe how FutureMetrics has developed a comprehensive model for forecasting the price of wood pellets delivered to Japan from seven different countries of origin. The model has several modules that represent steps in the supply chain. The foundation of the econometric model is commonly forecasted input parameters such as oil prices and growth rates in gross domestic product. Of course, those forecasts will be wrong! To capture the uncertainty in those forecasts and many other critical inputs to the model, FutureMetrics has used Palisade’s DecisionTools Suite to measure and model those patterns of uncertainty and to incorporate them into the model spreadsheet. Monte Carlo simulations yield valuable information about the price forecasts and those segments of the supply chain that contribute the most risk to unfavorable future prices. The webinar will redact some of the actual values to maintain a confidentiality agreement.