CME Group Enters Wind Market with Contracts Designed for Renewable Energy Hedging

CME Group, the world's leading derivatives marketplace, today announced plans to launch financially-settled Wind Power futures and options in the fourth quarter, pending regulatory review. These new tools will help market participants manage risk associated with wind power generation, extending CME Group's suite of market-leading energy products.

Based on indices provided by Vaisala Xweather, the new futures will track and settle against independent datasets that model projected wind power output at designated locations. The new contracts add to CME Group's market-leading product offerings that help customers navigate the energy transition, including Henry Hub Natural Gas and Weather futures.

The regions selected have either a significant amount of installed capacity or a notable percentage of their electricity comes from wind generation. The five contracts cover four key global power regions:

• Wind Power Germany ERA5 100m 2019 Index
• Wind Power Germany ERA5 100m 2022 B Index
• Wind Power UK ERA5 100m 2022 Index
• Wind Power Australia VIC 2024-06 Index
• Wind Power U.S. Texas ERCOT ERA5 100m 2022 Index

"As wind power accounts for a growing share of electricity generation, hedging renewable energy markets has never been more important," said Peter Keavey, Managing Director and Global Head of Energy Products at CME Group. "Our new Wind futures and options contracts will provide  market participants with a standardized, exchange-cleared solution to manage their exposure to fluctuating wind production impacting the power stack – all on the same platform as Natural Gas, Power, and Weather."

"Our work with CME Group brings the same independent, trusted, and rigorously modeled data behind temperature contracts to wind power, giving traders, utilities, and renewable operators a standardized way to manage the financial effects of an increasingly extreme weather environment," said David Whitehead, general manager of insurance sales at Vaisala Xweather. "It's a natural extension of the datasets our settlement services team has previously provided CME Group with, and we're excited to help scale the market for exchange-listed renewable weather derivatives across the US, Europe, and Australia."

Unlike traditional commodities, electricity must be generated the moment it is consumed. To maintain the balance between supply and demand, the energy grid relies on a diversified portfolio of sources. For natural gas and power traders, wind is the key variable – it dictates the marginal cost of energy and signals precisely when gas plants will turn on and when power prices are likely to move. Wind power generation grew by approximately 8% last year, according to the International Energy Agency.

CME Group offers the world's leading benchmark futures for energy. Average daily volume for Henry Hub, the world's leading benchmark futures for natural gas, reached a record ADV of 1 million futures and options contracts in the first quarter of 2026. In addition, weather contracts ADV grew 13% to 1,000 contracts a day in the first half of the year and average open interest climbed 58% to 73,000 contracts a day.

Wind Power futures and options will be listed on and subject to the rules of NYMEX. To learn more, visit here.

As the world's leading derivatives marketplace, CME Group (www.cmegroup.com) enables clients to trade futures, options, cash and OTC markets, optimize portfolios, and analyze data – empowering market participants worldwide to efficiently manage risk and capture opportunities. CME Group exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, cryptocurrencies, energy, agricultural products and metals. The company offers futures and options on futures trading through the CME Globex platform, fixed income trading via BrokerTec and foreign exchange trading on the EBS platform. In addition, it operates one of the world's leading central counterparty clearing providers, CME Clearing. 

CME Group, the Globe logo, CME, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Globex, and E-mini are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.  CBOT and Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, Inc.  NYMEX, New York Mercantile Exchange and ClearPort are trademarks of New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc.  COMEX is a trademark of Commodity Exchange, Inc. BrokerTec is a trademark of BrokerTec Americas LLC and EBS is a trademark of EBS Group LTD. The S&P 500 Index is a product of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC ("S&P DJI"). "S&P®", "S&P 500®", "SPY®", "SPX®", US 500 and The 500 are trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC; Dow Jones®, DJIA® and Dow Jones Industrial Average are service and/or trademarks of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. These trademarks have been licensed for use by Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. Futures contracts based on the S&P 500 Index are not sponsored, endorsed, marketed, or promoted by S&P DJI, and S&P DJI makes no representation regarding the advisability of investing in such products. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 

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SOURCE CME Group