DYNA JOURNAL ENGINEERING

Key words:

Métodos de valoración, Finanzas corporativas, Opciones reales, Sector de líneas aéreas, Cambio climático, Emisiones de CO2, Valuation Methods. Corporate Finance. Real Options. Airline Industry. Climate Change. CO2 emissions.

Article type:

ARTICULO DE INVESTIGACION / RESEARCH ARTICLE

Section:

VARIOUS

ABSTRACT
The European Commission issued a legislative proposal in December 2006, suggesting a cap on CO2 emissions for all planes arriving or departing from EU airports, while allowing airlines to buy and sell 'pollution credits' on the EU 'carbon market' (Emissions Trading Scheme, or ETS). In 2008 the new scheme got the final approval. Real options appear to be an appropriate methodology to capture the extra value brought by the new legislation on new airplane purchase rights: the airline will surely have the purchase right to the new plane if the operation of the plane generates unused pollution credits that the airline can sell at a minimum price in the carbon market. This paper tries to determine if the impact of ETS in the valuation of aircraft purchase rights is significant enough –in monetary terms- to include the new legislation in a complex real-option model already proposed by the authors recently. The research concludes that even the impact of ETS justifies its inclusion in the model, the quality of the available sets of historical data still raises some questions. Particularly, the assumption of market efficiency for the Carbon Pool over the recent years needs to be treated with caution.
Key words: Valuation Methods. Corporate Finance. Real Options. Airline Industry. Climate Change. CO2 emissions.