BUEC 563 Energy Industries and Markets Syllabus
Fall Semester, 2017
Instructor: Hailing Zang Office Hours: By appointment Email: [email protected] Office: BUS 4-30H
1. Course Overview
This course provides students with deeper understandings of the energy industry in the electricity, oil, and natural gas markets. The goal of this course is not only to set the current pictures of the energy industry of the Alberta markets, but also to broaden the students’ view of the global market as well as the future.
The course will be organized in a way to provide much discussion among student peers through case studies, presentations, and class participations. Students are also encouraged to participate in various seminars organized by CABREE. I will supplement the course with guest speakers from the industry if speakers are available.
2. Course Expectations
After finishing this course, students should be familiar with the construct of the market, the economics behind the market and be able to think through the market equilibrium process. Students should not only have a fresh understanding about the current energy market conditions, but also should develop a global and forward looking way of thoughts in conducting business in the energy field.
3. Required textbooks
There are no required textbooks for this class, most materials are available online.
Students are encouraged to read news and researches in the industry to keep updated. I will post relevant materials on the ULearn from time to time.
4. Prerequisite
BUEC 502 or 503. Not open to students with credit in BUEC560.
5. Evaluations
Quizzes (20%)
There will be 5 quizzes during the semester. The quizzes are to help reinforce the knowledge that was taught during the week. Each quiz is 4% of your total mark.
If a student has a valid excuse for missing a quiz and explained to the instructor in writing BEFORE the quiz, the quiz weight is assigned to the nearest exam. However, no excuse will be accepted AFTER the quiz is administered and no makeups for the quiz.
Exams (30%)
There will be two exams during the semester. The two exams are NOT cumulative. The first exam will cover the electricity industry and the second exam will cover the oil and gas industry. All the exams will be closed book exams. Each exam is worth 15% of your total mark.
Missing Exams: if you have 1) an emergency coming up ON the exam date or, 2) if you have already booked an air ticket on the exam date BEFORE the FIRST day of class, with valid written excuses and with supporting documents submitted to the lecturer, you are allowed to submit an individual research paper as a makeup work.
Important Dates:
First exam: November 2 in class;
Second exam: December 7 in class, the last day of class.
Case study/Class presentations (30%)
There will be two case studies during the semester, case topics are on the syllabus at the course outline section below. It is allowed for a maximum of 4 people as a group to present the case. Each case study will be 15% of your total mark. Each student is required to present in your group.
After the case presentations, each group should give a peer review of the other groups for their case study. Rubrics of the review standard will be given shortly after the semester starts and will be posted on ULearn. Peer reviews will contribute 80% of the total mark (as an average of all other groups’ review marks), with the remaining 20% given by the instructor. The peer reviews should be submitted in class following the presentation date in a sealed envelope by each group with group member names on the envelope.
Important Dates:
First case study class presentation date: Oct. 26;
Second case study class presentation date: Nov. 30.
News Briefing (10%)
To keep everyone on top of the industry trend, each student is required to do a 3 minute news briefing for the most current news, accompanied by a 2 minute class discussion about the news. The news briefing is in the format of PPT. The student giving the briefing will also lead the discussion. There will be two briefings for each student during the semester. Briefing schedule is posted on the Ulearn.
Class participation (10%)
The class participation mark will be composed of 8% self-evaluation and 2%
instructor evaluation. Self-evaluation of class participation should be submitted on the last day of class, December 7, in a sealed envelope with your name on the envelope. Attendance is checked by a sign-in sheet each class.
Letter Grade
The final letter grade will depend on your relative performance within the class. I will announce the letter grade cutoff marks after the last exam is marked on Ulearn. The distribution of the letter grade will follow the school guided distributions.
There is NO makeup or extra class work to improve your mark.
6. The Code of Student Behavior
The University of Alberta is committed to the highest standards of academic integrity and honesty. Students are expected to be familiar with these standards regarding academic honesty and to uphold the policies of the University in this respect. Students are particularly urged to familiarize themselves with the provisions of the Code of Student Behavior (http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/gfcpolicymanual/content.cfm?ID_page=37633) and avoid any behavior which could potentially result in suspicious of cheating, plagiarism, misrepresentation of facts and/or participation in an offence. Academic dishonesty is a serious offence and can result in suspension or expulsion from the University.
7. Course Outlines
September 7: Course overview and introduction September 14: Electricity market overview
September 21: Electricity market architecture (Quiz)
September 28: Locational Price, Hedging tools in the market (Quiz)
October 5: Ancillary service markets and Special topics in electricity markets (Quiz) October 12: Special topics in electricity markets continued (Quiz)
October 19: An overview of several geographic electricity markets (Alberta, ERCOT, PJM, England and Australia)
October 26: Case study presentation – Electricity Industry Restructuring vs.
Environment/Climate Change concerns (now and the future) November 2: Midterm Exam, continue with Oil Industry November 9: Natural gas industry
November 23: Unconventional oil and natural gas (Quiz)
November 30: Case study presentation – The Future of Energy Industry December 7: Final Exam
