No doubt your aware of the renewable energy subsidary surrounding biomass and Drax. Todays announcement was responsible for the fall which I regard as overdone. Results next week also so should favour a few spreads... Margin also nice, 5% of notional value is all I'm paying!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/25/subsidy-rates-renewable-energy?newsfeed=true
However, biomass energy - burning energy crops, waste wood and byproducts such as peanut husks, olive stones and straw to generate electricity - will be boosted by the government's plans. Dorothy Thompson, chief executive of Drax, the biggest coal-fired power station in the UK, said that the new rules on subsidies could mean that the power station was burning more biomass than coal within five years.
Drax's proposed £650m-£700m investment in converting its coal-fired boilers biomass had been on hold for months, but Wednesday's investment was likely to mean that it could go ahead, she said.
"This is all about jobs in the UK," she said. "The UK is critical to us as part of the supply chain for biomass, but also for imports of biomass - through the port facilities, in storage facilities and transport."
She was "absolutely confident" of sourcing enough biomass, both from the UK and imported, to meet the power station's needs affordably.
The company's share price dipped on the government announcement, which Thompson attributed to a misunderstanding on the part of stock market analysts to do with a technicality in the subsidy system. Previously, it was unclear whether large power stations such as Drax would benefit from the new arrangements, because there were plans to treat the conversion of a whole plant differently to the conversion of smaller sub-units. Thompson said that this issue had been resolved in a way that would preserve subsidies for its plans, but that the markets had not taken this into account. Drax will publish its financial results next week.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/25/subsidy-rates-renewable-energy?newsfeed=true
Aslo read have a look at
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/44eaa81a-d63b-11e1-b547-00144feabdc0.html#axzz21e9GQa3r
Under the Renewables Obligation (RO) licensed electricity suppliers are required to source a percentage of the electricity supplied from eligible renewable sources, including both dedicated and co-fired biomass. This percentage increases each year and is 6.7% for 2006/7, rising to 15.4% by 2015/16.
Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) are issued for each MWh of renewable electricity generated and are tradable. Compliance with the RO can be achieved by acquiring ROCs from generation or purchase, or paying a buy-out price (£40.71/MWh 2012-13). In this way a market value is provided for electricity generation from renewable sources. On 29th June 2012 the average price for ROCs was £42.02. The current selling price can be checked at: www.e-roc.co.uk/trackrecord.htm
Following the update to the Renewables Obligation allocations or ROCs are "banded", with different categories of generation receiving a different number of ROCs per MWh generated, depending upon whether they fall into the "established" category (receiving just 0.25 ROCs/MWh), "reference" (receiving 1 ROC/MWh), "post-demonstration" (receiving 1.5 ROCs/MWh) or "emerging technologies" receiving 2 ROCs/MWh). Under this proposal co-firing of non-energy crop biomass would receive only 0.25 ROCs/MWh, while co-firing of energy crops would receive 1 ROC/MWh (as today), dedicated regular biomass generation would receive 1.5 ROCs/MWh, while "advanced conversion technologes" (gasification, pyrolysis and anaerobic digestion), dedicated biomass burning energy crops, and dedicated regular (non-energy crop) biomass with CHP would all receive 2 ROCs/MWh.
http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk/portal/page?_pageid=77,20190&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL