LONDON, June 3 /PRNewswire/ --

- Includes Carbon and Renewable Obligation Certificate Price Forecasts

Ventyx(TM), a leading provider of software, data and advisory business solutions to the worldwide energy and utility industry, today announced the release of its Spring 2008 European Reference Case Reports, providing a 25-year outlook for key European wholesale energy markets.

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These reports, which are updated on a semiannual basis, contain Ventyx's independently formed, detailed price forecasts for wholesale electricity, carbon, natural gas, fuel oil, coal and, for the UK market, a Renewable Obligation Certificate (ROC) price forecast. The reports give Ventyx's latest views on key market issues, market restructuring, new plant entry and retirements, transmission interconnections and emissions.

For Spring 2008, Ventyx has produced three reports: 1. Great Britain and All-Island Market Outlook, covering: England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland (150 pages) 2. Northwest European Market Outlook, covering: France, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria (150 pages) 3. Italian Market Outlook, covering 6 core Italian wholesale electricity market pricing zones (70 pages)

Ventyx's forecast horizon is 2008-2032, and Ventyx Chief Economist George Given is confident that "each report provides a unique insight into how the major issues currently impacting global energy markets will shape each individual European power market over the next 25 years. European markets are complexly interconnected and interdependent, and Ventyx's powerful modeling tools and databases are able to capture this complexity in full hourly, unit-level detail to predict major changes to the current resource mix over the study period as old, conventional plant is replaced with new low-emission technology."

However, at the launch of the Spring 2008 Reference Cases at the Emission and Fuels Workshop in London, Ayse Sabuncu, head of Advisory and Data at Ventyx in Europe, said, "We do not expect that the plant mix changes currently proposed will be extensive enough to meet stringent environmental targets, and fossil fuels will remain a key generation source. Dependence on imported gas, rising CO2 emissions and missing renewable targets are real issues the market will need to proactively address, along with key uncertainties around carbon and gas price volatility and the upward pressure on prices from rising new build costs."

In addition to full details of assumptions and Ventyx world-class forecasting models, methodology and price formation process, the reports contain a contextual analysis of the major issues underlying the European power markets, including environmental and security of supply issues affecting the generation plant mix both now and in the future. Subsequent sections provide country-specific assumptions and market shaping factors employed in developing a detailed electricity market forecast for each country. Each section also includes detailed country-by-country modeling results, including:

-- Market structure and new entrants -- Existing resource base, retirements and new generation build plans and requirements -- Load growth -- Interconnection -- Environmental policies and targets -- Renewable energy generation -- Country-specific forecast fuel prices and transportation costs -- Future plant mix and load/resource balance -- Generation volume forecast -- Carbon emissions -- Wholesale electricity prices -- Risk and uncertainty in the forecast

About Ventyx Reference Case

Ventyx's Reference Case is a standard of the industry used by ratings agencies, regulators, market competition commissions, energy companies, utilities and their investors as a source of independent, transparent, consistent analysis of changing energy market fundamentals, wholesale expected prices and how they are formed. Our European databases and regional power and fuels forecasts provide a comprehensive view of energy market fundamentals and market clearing or supply cost analysis across Europe. These databases provide the most comprehensive, detailed and accurate electricity power, fuels and demand data available and include country-specific generating units, fuels usage, hourly electric loads, operating and capital costs, transactions and interconnections. Ventyx's unique set of detailed fundamental data for the European market represents years of research, documentation and testing of the data for market simulation purposes. The research data is coupled with Ventyx's own internally developed data, a result of more than 15 years of experience in modeling liberalising energy markets worldwide.

About Ventyx Energy Advisory Service

Ventyx Energy Advisory Service has worldwide relationships with energy market participants, generators, transmission firms, oil and gas producers, load serving entities, cooperative enterprises and the firms that finance, analyse and consult to them. This list includes upwards of 400 installed software and database clients, positioning the company as a category leader in energy market simulation, portfolio planning and risk management and energy market operations. Since 1985, Ventyx and its predecessor companies have been trusted advisors performing more than 2,500 project assignments for energy industry participants worldwide. Since 1997, we've provided independent market opinions for more than EUR30 billion in short- and long-term project financing of more than 70,000 MW of energy projects.

About Ventyx

Ventyx is a leading business solutions provider, delivering asset management, mobile workforce management, customer care, energy trading and risk management, energy operations, and energy analytics solutions to more than 900 energy, utility and communications customers, as well as to asset-intensive customers in selected commercial markets. With approximately 1,200 employees in more than 20 locations worldwide, Ventyx delivers best-of-breed business solutions that maximize operational and financial performance, backed by the industry's deepest available industry-specific domain expertise. For more information, visit our Website at www.ventyx.com.

Ventyx is a trademark of Ventyx Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Available Topic Expert(s): For information on the listed expert(s), click appropriate link. Ayse Sabuncu http://profnet.prnewswire.com/Subscriber/ExpertProfile.aspx?ei=74916 George Given http://profnet.prnewswire.com/Subscriber/ExpertProfile.aspx?ei=74890

Web site: http://www.ventyx.com

Shereen Langer, Ventyx Corporate Communications, +44-0-20-8834-8703, shereen.langer@ventyx.com ; Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080318/CLTU015LOGO, AP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org, PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com