Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE:ICE), one of the world's leading providers of financial market technology and data powering global capital markets, and home to the largest and most liquid markets in the world to trade and clear energy derivatives, today announced that ICE has expanded its Value-at-Risk (VaR)-based portfolio margining methodology, IRM 2, to ICE’s U.S. ERCOT power markets.
ICE’s U.S. ERCOT power futures and options allow market participants to manage electricity price risk in Texas. These contracts now join more than 1000 energy derivative contracts already margined under IRM 2, which includes ICE’s global power, oil and refined products, natural gas, LNG, emissions and freight markets.
The IRM 2 model is designed to be responsive to changing market conditions, providing stability through different volatility conditions and avoiding “big step” margin changes through anti-procyclical features. The model is designed to be resilient against stress events and correlation breakdown, as well as adjusting for seasonality where appropriate. By utilizing a Filtered Historical Simulation VaR approach which models the behavior of a portfolio, IRM 2 is designed to capture all relationships and diversifying effects within a portfolio.
ICE ERCOT futures and options are structured around specific locations on the Texas electricity grid, covering peak or off-peak hours, and are available across multi-hour blocks, daily, or monthly periods. ICE ERCOT futures and options open interest is up 23% year-over-year (y/y) with average daily volume up 14% y/y.
“The expansion of IRM 2 to ICE ERCOT power is an important move for our customers who rely on capital-efficient risk management tools to trade and hedge effectively across U.S. power and wider energy markets,” said Brian Lewis, Senior Director, Head of North American Natural Gas and Power at ICE. “As U.S. power consumption hits new highs, customers can now benefit from IRM 2’s portfolio-based approach which captures the correlations across interconnected energy exposures and translates them into margin benefits when trading diversified or hedged portfolios across ICE.”
ICE offers the most comprehensive suite of power derivative products in the U.S., including over 400 financially settled futures and 60 options contracts, allowing market participants to hedge and manage risk at scale.
In Q1 2026, open interest across ICE’s U.S. power futures and options hit 1.55 billion megawatt hours, rising 10% over the quarter, while volumes during the quarter reached nearly 2 billion megawatt hours, up 9%. 2025 was a record year for U.S. power futures and options trading at ICE with a record 7.8 billion megawatt hours traded, up 30% versus 2024, as volumes in U.S. power options rose 96% y/y.
For more information on IRM 2, please visit: www.ice.com/clearing/margin-models/irm-2.
