CME Group (NASDAQ: CME) announced plans to launch financially-settled Wind Power futures and options in the fourth quarter of 2026, pending regulatory review. The contracts will be listed on NYMEX.

The five contracts cover four regions: Germany, the UK, Australia, and the U.S. Texas ERCOT market. They will be based on indices provided by Vaisala Xweather, settling against datasets that model projected wind power output at designated locations.

"As wind power accounts for a growing share of electricity generation, hedging renewable energy markets has never been more important," said Peter Keavey, Managing Director and Global Head of Energy Products at CME Group. "Our new Wind futures and options contracts will provide market participants with a standardized, exchange-cleared solution to manage their exposure to fluctuating wind production impacting the power stack."

The regions selected were chosen based on installed wind capacity or the share of electricity generated from wind. The contracts are intended to allow traders, utilities, and renewable energy operators to manage financial exposure to variable wind output.

According to the International Energy Agency, wind power generation grew approximately 8% in the prior year. CME Group also reported that its weather contracts average daily volume grew 13% to 1,000 contracts per day in the first half of 2026, while average open interest climbed 58% to 73,000 contracts per day.

Vaisala Xweather will supply the underlying index data. "Our work with CME Group brings the same independent, trusted, and rigorously modeled data behind temperature contracts to wind power," said David Whitehead, general manager of insurance sales at Vaisala Xweather.