Long‐term relationships between electricity and oil, gas and coal future prices—evidence fromNordic countries,ContinentalEurope and theUnitedKingdom

Abstract

AbstractThis paper investigates the relationship between futures prices of electricity, on the one hand and crude oil, natural gas and coal on the other hand, in theUnitedKingdom,German andNordic energy markets. Energy traders and market participants use statistical models in their trading activities. We seek to establish robust cointegration based models as decision tools for energy commodity spread trading. We look at three different markets with different input mixtures, for electricity generation. Using daily futures data from period 2006 to 2012, we find cointegration betweenUKelectricity prices andCoal andGas, and betweenNordic electricity prices andCoal. The spread betweenGerman electricity prices andGas,Oil andCoal prices are also stationary. The consequence of this finding could be a possible trading strategy which involves buying electricity futures and selling gas or coal when the spread is above the mean and reversing the strategy when the spread is below the mean. The suggested strategy assumes a reversion to the mean, which we show takes some time, as displayed by the slow speed of adjustment.