The European Energy Exchange (EEX) will launch Chubu power futures and options on December 8, 2025, expanding into Japan’s third largest TSO area ahead of the Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM), which plans to do so in the spring of 2026.
According to the exchange’s October 16, 2025, statement, monthly, quarterly, seasonal, and fiscal year baseload and peakload futures will be offered alongside monthly baseload options. They will expand EEX’s existing lineup of Tokyo and Kansai area products, which also include shorter-duration contracts.
The addition comes as power trading in Japan continues to grow amid an ongoing shift away from the feed-in-tariff (FIT) scheme toward market-based business models. It follows the exchange’s recent introduction of fiscal year contracts for the existing two areas to allow companies to better align their hedges with their operations.
Chubu’s demand reached 130TWh in 2024, trailing only Tokyo’s 281TWh and Kansai’s 141TWh. Together, the three areas accounted for about 64% of the country’s total demand during the year. Kyushu ranked a distant fourth at 87TWh.
The need for separate Chubu products started to arise in mid-2021 when wholesale prices in the area began to consistently decouple from and exceed Kansai’s. The day-ahead price spread between the two regions averaged 1.08 yen per kWh in 2024, ranging between -3.81 and 10.41 yen per kWh.
Japan has been EEX’s fastest-growing market, with transacted volume in 2025 having already surpassed 100TWh and topped the 2024 full-year volume of 72TWh by almost 40%. The exchange said it is also considering the introduction of daily Kansai area futures.
