Investment Decisions for Clean Development Mechanism under Uncertain Energy Policies using Real Option

Recently, Korea parliament legislated the Low Carbon Green Growth Act (April, 2012) and approved a bill (May, 2012) to start carbon emission trading system in 2015. It means that for the first time, government would regulate the amounts of carbon emission in private entities, and private entities should attain predefined emission reduction goals by implementing clean development mechanism (CDM) project or buy the Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) from the trading market to avoid penalty. Under these circumstances, it is not easy for them to determine when or how to implement the CDM project because the governmental energy policies about the level of governmental subsidies, periods for free emission allocation, etc. are still under discussion and the future price of the CERs is quite uncertain. Thus, this study presents a real-option based model to assess the financial viability of the CDM project which switches bunker-C oil to liquefied natural gas (LNG). The proposed model is expected to assist private entities in establishing the investment strategy for CDM project under uncertain government energy policies.