About Engelhart
At Engelhart CTP, the team manages over 4 gigawatts of renewable energy globally. For years, they, along with the rest of the industry, had to manage the complex, asset-specific risks of Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) through bilateral negotiations. It was the industry norm, but the process was highly inefficient and opaque.
It left a fundamental question: if you can trade Baseload Production, why can’t you trade German Wind Production? What if an entire country’s renewable energy output profile could be traded as a single, standardised commodity?
The challenge
Engelhart’s renewables business, which expanded following the acquisition of Trailstone in 2024, operates on both sides of the PPA market. Because they act as an offtaker for producers and provide PPAs to corporate clients, their portfolio is exposed to significant, common renewable energy risks. While most market players were navigating similar exposures to price, volume, and shape, the industry lacked a common currency to trade them.
The core problem was that the asset-specific nature of PPAs made transferring or hedging these risks incredibly difficult. As Akin Sahin, PPA Lead at Engelhart, explains:
“The physical PPA market or these asset-specific PPA agreements make it quite complicated to transfer or reiterate these risks, unlike most other commodities.”
Historically, the process was fragmented and manual. Traders had to negotiate bespoke deals with a very limited number of counterparties. This created an illiquid environment where establishing a fair market price for volume and shape risks was nearly impossible. “It is also hard for traders to reach a consensus on the performance of individual assets,” Sahin notes, which turned trading even a single product into a lengthy, analysis-heavy ordeal.
Discovering a standard on enmacc
Engelhart’s journey toward a more efficient solution began with digitally trading weather derivatives, which laid the groundwork for their next steps.
The major opportunity arrived when enmacc launched a Wholesale PPA product based on enwex renewable indices. Before adopting the solution, Engelhart rigorously tested the index to verify its accuracy in reflecting the country’s average capture rate.
“We were checking how accurately the index is representing the national production, especially in terms of capture rates, and we were very satisfied with the results,” says Sahin. “It only took us a couple of days to be convinced that this was the product we can trade in Germany.”
“The enmacc platform provided the two things the market was missing: standardisation and a centralised venue for trading.
Market impact: a liquid market for renewable risk
Having a standardised product based on a transparent national index finally gave Engelhart the “common currency” they needed. The market venue successfully transforms an abstract risk into a tradable commodity. Sahin highlights the shift: “For baseload or peak load power we have a well-functioning market, as with any other commodity, where we can continuously observe bids and offers. Until recently this was missing for wind power and solar power. enmacc is now providing exactly this marketplace for German wind and solar, and I believe this is a very important step going forward.
Looking ahead, our team at Engelhart is keen to see even more liquidity build in the wholesale PPA market, and we are actively exploring further opportunities on the platform, including integrations for our physical gas desk.
As Sahin puts it: “I believe this is the future of the power market. With the growing share of renewables, all market participants are increasingly exposed to renewable risk, so we should trade it.”
