Green investment and asset stranding under transition scenario uncertainty

Dynamic scenario uncertainty is modelled by assuming that the economic agent acquires the information about the scenario progressively by observing a signal. The problem of valuing an investment is formulated as an American option pricing problem, where the optimal exercise time corresponds to the time of entering into a potential investment project or the time of selling a potentially stranded asset. To illustrate our approach, we apply representative scenarios from integrated assessment models to the examples of a coal-fired power plant without Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and potential investment into a biomass power plant with CCS.