Decision Flexibility vs. Information Accuracy in Energy-intensive Businesses

Demand-side management and demand response are integral building blocks for environmental sus-tainability. Exchange-based power pricing serves as an economic mechanism to set incentives to shift demand to periods where prices are low. Low power prices also serve as an indicator for green(er) power, since high feed-ins from variable renewable sources push the electricity price downward. For businesses, minimizing electricity costs thus not only contributes to economic but also environmental sustainability. Hence, especially energy-intensive businesses can become greener and more competitive by integrating volatile electricity prices into their production planning activities. In this paper, we demonstrate that the length of the planning horizons is key to achieve more sustainable outcomes due to the trade-off between decision flexibility and information accuracy. Decision flexibility – i.e. the ca-pability to shift processes – increases with longer planning horizons. Information accuracy – i.e. price accuracy – increases with shorter planning horizons. Information Systems (IS) can help to balance this trade-off. We follow a data-driven approach and derive both actual and predicted electricity spot prices from historic electricity intraday market data in Germany. We find that decision flexibility and infor-mation accuracy affect the planning horizon as conceived. First results indicate that more sustainable outcomes are achieved with longer planning horizons.