Overall, we expect demand to remain robust for Non-solar RECs (but not for Solar RECs). Increased demand, combined with significantly lower issuances of RECs will result in much improved clearing ratio for projects that are holding RECs.
Demand Comparison
As mentioned above, demand for non-solar RECs has been robust compared to the same period last year. As of Novem-ber, demand is up by 51% compared to the same period last year.
We expect this trend to continue, driven by several factors –
Demand for Solar RECs this year compared to the same pe-riod last year has been down by 1%, or essentially the same. However, we believe that by end of FY 16-17, there is a pos-sibility that the total demand totals less than that of the pre-vious year.
This is because the current floor prices are valid only till March 31, 2017. The general expectation is of a small correction in the price of Non-solar RECs and a signifi-cant correction in the price of solar RECs. Besides this, the vintage multiplier (of 2.66x) currently in place will also expire. This may result in
(a) Significant price reduc-tion of Solar RECs,
(b) a major jump in S-RECs inventory as existing S-RECs are adjusted to the new price, and
(c) drastic reduction in S-RECs issuance from April 2017 on-wards.
These changes in the near future make market forecast-ing for solar RECs a perilous task. Our approach assess demand in the same basis as mentioned above, but moderates it by a significant factor as closer to March obligated entities are expected to hold off purchases till new prices take effect.
RECs Supply
Two factors have resulted in reduced supply of RECs :-
As a result, Non-solar RECs issuance is down by 38% ?compared to the same period last year, and Solar RECs issu-ances down by 41%. Going forward, we expect the non-solar RECs issuance to remain subdued compared to last year (as a big impact of the 4th amendment has been on sugar co-gen project which see issuances starting from November to April or May). For the full year FY16-17 we forecast Non-solar RECs issuance to be 35% below the last year number. The reduction in Solar RECs issuance is due to higher issu-ance last year as a result of solar vintage multipliers, and time-lag this year as the documentation related to 4th amendment is completed. Overall, we expect the year to end with roughly 30% lower issuance compared to last year.
Demand and supply
We have forecast demand under three scenarios –
(1) Base case – demand from states that have enforced RPO in the past or have current orders for RPO enforcement are in-cluded. Even for such states, a probably of demand material-izing is applied to the total RPO gap;
(2) Medium enforce-ment – expected demand from states that have on-going RPO assessment are added to the demand in scenario 1;
(3) High enforcement – this scenario envisages that most states will take some action towards RPO enforcement. Under this scenario, even those states that have not enforced RPO regulations till date are expected to initiate action, albeit the expected demand from such states is moderated by assign-ing a low probability (20-30%).
Conclusion:
Looking at the overall picture after the demand-supply forecasting exercise shows the following: