Nord Pool launches financial power trading, targets Epad liquidity

Nord Pool is building out a financial trading venue to sit alongside its physical day-ahead and intraday markets. The exchange has cited NASDAQ Power's earlier failure in Nordic financial markets and positioned its own integrated market model as the differentiating factor, according to Energy Watch.

The liquidity foundation is taking shape. Nord Pool confirmed on 2 September 2025 that it had secured a market maker for Nordic Epad contracts. Epads are the primary instrument traders use to hedge area-price risk against the Nordic system price, and a committed market maker is the minimum condition for a functional book.

EEX did not wait. On 9 September 2025 it launched futures contracts covering the Baltic states and Finland, five days after Nord Pool's market-maker announcement. The two exchanges are now in direct competition for financial volumes across the same northern European bidding zones.

The commercial case for hedging products in these zones is visible in spot data. ERR reported Baltic day-ahead prices peaking at close to €400/MWh on 1 February 2026, then hitting €400/MWh again on 16 February 2026. Those price levels, against a backdrop that also included negative Nordic prices in August 2024 per Bloomberg, illustrate the volatility exposure that forward and Epad products are designed to offset.