Valuation of Decision Flexibility and Strategic Value in Coal Gasification Projects with the Option-To-Switch between Different Outputs

Piotr W. Saługa, Paweł Grzesiak and Jacek Kamiński
Additional contact information
Piotr W. Saługa: Management Department, WSB University, 41-300 Dąbrowa Górnicza, Poland
Paweł Grzesiak: Faculty of Management, AGH University of Science & Technology, 30-067 Kraków, Poland
Jacek Kamiński: Division of Energy Economics, Mineral and Energy Economy Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, 31-261 Kraków, Poland

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-20

Abstract: Coal gasification has been promoted as a sophisticated clean energy technology alternative to coal burning these days. Aside from the usual technical difficulties, economic issues of such projects—especially valuation challenges—are important problems that practitioners usually struggle with. This is because of the major extent of managerial flexibility linked with specific characteristics of coal gasification projects, in particular, possibilities to mothball/restart manufacturing lines, or change between different outputs. The value of such flexibilities may be well assessed by real options valuations. The aim of this paper is to show that for the coal gasification technologies the real options valuation is more suitable than traditional discounted cash flow technique. This approach was applied to calculate an integrated plant that can produce either electricity or methanol. As the valuation approach the multiplicative stochastic process was used. As a consequence, binomial lattices of end-product (electricity and methanol) were developed. Then, in regard to them (reference instruments), two corresponding lattices of net cash flows (consecutive instruments) were created. In the end, two trees of switching option value were developed—one for electricity production as an initial mode, and the second for methanol production, delivering expanded net present (strategic) value.

Keywords: coal gasification; compound options; option-to-switch; real options analysis; binomial lattice; strategic value (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/11/2826/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/11/2826/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:11:p:2826-:d:366411

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().