Pricing Irish power futures. A comparative analysis of forward curves in European energy markets

Market power mitigation and price risk management are essential in energy markets. In the context of the Irish power exchange, regulators achieve both objectives through the mandatory sale of forward fixed for floating swaps by oligopolistic power generators. The contract strike price is derived by means of an econometric regression with European energy futures prices as independent variables. This paper sets out to address two hypotheses: the first, that the prices of exchange traded power futures typically incorporate a risk premium; and the second, that backwardation and contango in energy futures markets have the potential to cause an unintended bias in the contract strike prices. Despite the availability of ample analysis of North American energy markets, published studies on European energy markets are limited. This study adds to the available body of work. This paper examines three power exchanges, and identifies positive forward premiums on average. Furthermore, this paper analyses the futures markets to which the contracts are indexed. Drawing from the theory of storage [1], the study reveals periods of both backwardation and contango.