Britain could get a new power market exchange this year if a new operator is chosen quickly, Hans-Bernd Menzel, the chief executive of Europe's largest energy exchange EEX, said on July 15. The new bourse is needed to revive Britain's flagging power market, suffering from years of declining liquidity.
Germany's EEX is one of three companies bidding to create a new power market in Britain, in a tender run by the Futures and Options Association (FOA) to increase transparency and liquidity. But, more than two years after the project was announced and more than four months after the FOA began testing the competing platforms, the companies vying to redesign the market are still waiting.
"One of the problems with the process is that it takes so much time," Menzel told Reuters in an interview. "During those two years volumes in the German market for instance have something like doubled. If an end were to come soon, it should be possible to set up a well functioning market from an infrastructure point of view, by the end of this year."
Although Britain has one of the most open energy sectors in the world and its gas market is by far the biggest and most liquid in Europe, trade volumes in its fragmented power markets have dwindled over recent years.
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