Title: Estimating the 'value at risk' of EUA futures prices based on the extreme value theory

Authors: Zhi-Fu Mi; Yue-Jun Zhang

Addresses: School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China; Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China. ' School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China; Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

Abstract: This paper employs the Extreme Value Theory (EVT) to measure the 'Value at Risk' (VaR) of EUA futures prices. The results show that during the sample period: first, the EVT approach can be used to reliably measure the extreme risk of carbon futures markets of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, both for Phase I and Phase II. Second, the downside extreme risk of carbon futures market outweighs the upside risk, with evident asymmetric features. Moreover, the average VaR of carbon futures contract DEC10 proves much less than that of contract DEC07 during the sample period.

Keywords: EU ETS; European Union Emissions Trading Scheme; EVT; extreme value theory; VaR; value at risk; carbon market; carbon trading; carbon emissions; CO2; carbon dioxide; carbon futures.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGEI.2011.045027

International Journal of Global Energy Issues, 2011 Vol.35 No.2/3/4, pp.145 - 157

Published online: 26 Mar 2015 *

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