The European Energy Exchange (EEX) will launch financially settled power futures for Germany against the background of a possible split of the German-Austrian price zone.

The new products will be available for exchange trading and trade registration as of 25 April 2017 and will provide additional trading and hedging opportunities compared to the existing Phelix Futures product suite.
 
The product offering will comprise base and peak contracts with a monthly, quarterly and yearly maturity. The new German power futures will be settled against the common German-Austrian Day-Ahead auction price until the potential split and, in case it becomes effective, against a local German Day-Ahead auction price thereafter.
 
Peter Reitz (pictured), chief executive officer of EEX, says: “The ongoing discussion about a possible split of the German-Austrian price zone has led to increased uncertainty in the market. By offering additional long-term contracts for the German price zone only, alongside the existing Phelix product suite for the German-Austrian price zone, we follow the need of our customers to hedge against future price risks, regardless of the final price zone decision. Nevertheless, we strongly believe that such a decision would be a step in the wrong direction. Instead, we urgently recommend the further integration of European power markets as a split of the most liquid European price zone is likely to decrease liquidity and increase costs of power supply. Therefore, we will actively participate in the further debate on this topic.”
 
The offering for the German-Austrian price zone (Phelix-Future) currently covers Day, weekend, week, month, quarter and year futures as well as month, quarter and year baseload options. Furthermore, power derivatives for France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Romania, the UK as well as the Nordic market are available on the EEX platform. This summer, EEX will extend its power derivatives product range with contracts for the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Romania which are currently listed on Power Exchange Central Europe (PXE).