Five Years Of Exchange Trading In Energy In Germany – EEX As A Success Story

Leipzig-based European Energy Exchange (EEX), continental Europe´s largest energy exchange in means of participants and volume, views back on five years of exchange trading in energy. The start of German exchange trading in en-ergy took place on June 15, 2000, with trading of the modest number of 1.836 Mega-watt hours (MWh). Yet in October 2001, a bit more than 15 months later, the exchange volume was 90.000 MWh per day, representing about 6.6% of the energy sold in Ger-many. Little more than two years after the start of the trading, at the end of July 2002, there were altogether 111 participants from ten countries trading on the new exchange.

In this year´s April, the Leipzig-based energy exchange announced a new monthly re-cord on the Derivatives Market with 55.199.774 MWh. In May 2005, the daily average trading on the EEX Derivatives Market was 1.425.739 MWH, on the Spot Market 225.660 MWH. In the meantime, there are 126 companies from 15 European countries and the US trading at the EEX in Leipzig. The success abroad was fostered by co-operations with internationally renowned brokers and banks. Today, EEX is the ex-change in continental Europe with the largest number of banks participating.

The name “European Energy Exchange” speaks for itself. Beyond energy, there are since March 2005 CO2 Emission Allowances traded and settled on the same system, since April the opportunity to fulfil the trades in Austria is given and from the beginning of June on, EEX offers futures with direct physical delivery. These new futures open-up the perspective of EEX to offer Derivatives with delivery abroad in further steps.