Editor's letter

Welcome to the August issue of Energy Risk. I'm holding the fort this month while Stella honeymoons in the Cook Islands – a much better place to spend the summer than here in the UK! At the time of press, umbrellas were still very much in evidence all over London and extreme rainfall has put large parts of England underwater, causing billions of pounds of flood damage. It is a costly reminder of the economic risk posed by the one commodity that affects almost every business: the weather. On page 33, David Watkins interviews David Riker, chief executive of Storm Exchange, an electronic weather exchange that aims to help end-users mitigate their weather risk.

Our cover story this month is our end-users' forum. Increased liberalisation of energy markets, coupled with rising energy prices, are making price and volume risk management a greater challenge than ever for end-users in all types of industries. In this special report, we present interviews and case studies from energy risk managers at German airline Lufthansa, Scandinavian paper maker Stora Enso, Australian cement firm Adelaide Brighton Cement, and Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, delving into the latest challenges faced by end-users.

Also, we are pleased to present a special report on the Asian energy market, which includes a country focus on South Korea, a Q&A with N Yuvaraj Dinesh Babu, director of carbon trading and head of climate change at Singapore-based ACX-Change, an update on alternative fuel policy implementation in China and a report on international oil companies' efforts to crack open the Chinese wholesale oil market.