Royal Dutch Shell sets up electricity trade desk in Japan

It eyes optimisation potential in consumers amidst "volatility in the power system".

Bloomberg reports that Royal Dutch Shell has set up a small desk to trade electricity in Japan, where it is in an “experimental” phase of learning to buy and sell power and identify industrial customers.

“We think there will be more volatility in the power system going forward,” Mark Gainsborough, the company’s executive vice president of new energies, told reporters at the company’s Singapore office. “There will be more optimisation potential sitting in the middle of the value chain.”

According to the report, this marks Shell's entry into the deregulated Japanese electricity market and an indication that more power players could follow.

Spot trading on the Japan Electric Power Exchange has surged as reforms required the utilities to sell power. Nearly 30% of the country’s electricity was purchased through the exchange in November, up from just 1.5% before the reforms.

Read the full report here.