Practice Exam for the Energy Risk Professional (ERP)

Are you preparing for the Energy Risk Professional exam but struggle with the lack of available practice questions? Then I encourage you to try the new practice exam: It is a full-length, brand new exam with realistic topics weightings, the latest current topics, 180 difficult questions, and a very helpful answer key that quickly summarizes the answers to the questions so you can again reinforce them while you correct the exam.

Check out the Energy Risk Professional Practice Exam now!

Renewable Energy: How Far Do We Have to Go Until It Is Competitive?

With the recent political motions to phase out nuclear power in favor of renewables, one has to ask whether it is actually possible with today's technology and reliability of renewable energy sources. In a nutshell, renewables are: Solar power, hydroelectricty, wind power, biomass, geothermal energy, and ocean energy.

They have varying degrees of reliability, but most often with renewables, they work best in conjunction with each other, i.e., solar energy together with hydro energy for storage during nightime hours. There is a good primer on renewables available here.

In my opinion, renewables are a great thing, and they definitely have huge growth prospects ahead of them. However, it the current state of affairs, renewables would not be a reliable replacement for traditional energy sources. I am all for replacing nuclear energy, but we have to be careful not to cut ourselves off from economic growth, which largely depends on the availablity of large amount of energy.

I look forward to the future progress of renewables, and hope they will soon catch up with conventional energy sources.

Overview for the Energy Risk Professional (ERP) Designation from GARP

What is the ERP?

The Energy Risk Professional (ERP) program measures an applicant's knowledge of the main energy markets and determines his capability to handle the physical and financial risks that exist in the multifaceted universe of power and energy. The program curriculum was carefully put together with the help of real-world energy practitioners and risk professionals from all around the world, and provides a full summary of all key energy markets including the upstream and downstream processes connected to both the trading and structuring of different energy commodities and the identification, measurement and management of key risks.

Why should I consider the ERP?

As economies turn around and the world population grows, international energy requirements will expand, creating demand for highly skilled energy risk professionals. Getting the ERP designation under your belt not only broadens your skills, it demonstrates a homogeneous level of industry knowledge, making you a documented leader in energy risk management.

What makes the ERP program one of its kind?

With the globalization and interdependence of energy products, delivery mechanisms, and risk management techniques, the aim of the ERP® is to help ensure everyone in the energy industry "speaks the same language ."

Resulting from present industry standards and practices, the ERP® program creates a link between the physical and financial energy markets. Topics associated with the key markets include exploration and production, transportation and storage, refining and processing, distribution, and the trading, structuring and hedging of commodity positions in crude oil, refined petroleum, natural gas, LNG, coal, electricity, and alternative sources of energy.

Who created the ERP Designation?

GARP's Energy Oversight Committee (EOC) plays a very important part in creating the ERP Exam. For that reason GARP ensures that the committee is comprised of professionals with thorrough expertise spanning the complete range of disciplines required by the ERP® Exam. Present EOC members include an equivalent weighting of more experienced practitioners with expertise in risk consulting, commodity trading, risk management and quantitative analysis from energy markets, both physical and financial.

To make sure that exam topics and questions are relevant applicable to real life applications, the EOC updates the ERP Study Guide annually and finalizes questions approximately two months before the administration of the exam. Before it is finalized the examination is reviewed by a select group of energy market experts from around the world to ensure that questions are clear-cut and understandable to candidates regardless of where in the world they may be sitting for the exam.

How Should I Prepare for the ERP?

I recommend you use the original GARP study material as your basic learning resource. While you read the material, you should create summaries on your own, but you should also use a review solution such as the ViveraRISK Concept Checkers for the ERP exam.

10 Steps to Prepare for the Energy Risk Professional Exam (ERP Exam)

If you like to check out the ViveraRISK ERP Concept Checkers that I mention in this video, please head on over to this site which features learning resources, articles, and study material for the Energy Risk Professional exam.