Nord Pool traces its origin to Foreningen Samkjøringen, a power exchange formed by eastern Norwegian electricity companies in 1932 on the initiative of Augustin Paus, and which soon encompassed all the electricity companies in eastern Norway. In 1971 the exchange merged with the regional exchanges in other parts of Norway, and became Samkjøringen av kraftverkene i Norge, with 118 power companies as members as of 1988.
1991-2000: Nordic deregulation and integration
In 1991 the Norwegian parliament decided to deregulate the market for power trading. In 1993 Statnett Marked AS was established as an independent company. In 1996, the Swedish electricity market was also deregulated. Statnett Marked AS was subsequently replaced by Nord Pool ASA, owned in equal parts by the Swedish and Norwegian Transmission System Operators, Svenska Kraftnät and Statnett. This contributed to the unification of the two countries' electricity markets. Finland as well as western and eastern Denmark joined Nord Pool ASA in 1998, 1999 and 2000, respectively.
2000-present: Expansion in Europe
In 2000, Nord Pool ASA participated in establishing the Leipzig Power Exchange. Nord Pool also supplied its technology to France's Powernext exchange. On 27 December 2001, Nord Pool ASA's spot market activities were spun off into a new company, Nord Pool Spot AS. The remaining parts of Nord Pool ASA were later acquired by Nasdaq, and are presently known as Nasdaq Commodities. In 2005, Nord Pool Spot AS started trading and clearing of European Unionemission allowances, becoming the first exchange to expand its activities into this area. The company expanded its activities to Germany by opening the KONTEK bidding area. On 12 January 2010, Nord Pool Spot AS in cooperation with Nasdaq Commodities launched the N2EXpower market in the United Kingdom. On 2 February 2010, Nord Pool Spot signed an agreement with the Estonian national grid company Elering to create the Nord Pool Spot Estlink bidding area starting from 1 April 2010. Nord Pool Spot also delivered the technical solution for the Lithuanian market place Baltpool. On 9 June 2010, APX-ENDEX, Belpex and Nord Pool Spot agreed to create a cross-border intraday electricity market based on Nord Pool Spot's Elbas technology. Today, the common intraday market includes the Nordic countries, the Baltic countries, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. In 2012, Nord Pool Spot opened a bidding area in Lithuania, and in 2013 the Latvian market was opened. On 20 January 2016, Nord Pool Spot AS was rebranded to Nord Pool AS. In 2017, a new clearing and settlement system was launched and a new GB half hourly auction was introduced. In addition, Nord Pool was nominated as a NEMO in the island of Ireland and joined forces with Agder Energi to develop NODES, a new marketplace capable of exploiting decentralised flexibility. On 27 August 2019 Nord Pool started trading in France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands, the result of a European Union decision to allow several power exchanges to operate in the same markets, increasing competition. On 5 December 2019 Euronext announced that it would acquire 66% of Nord Pool. The acquisition was completed on 15 January 2020.
Organisation
Nord Pool has its main office in Lysaker and further offices in Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, Berlin and London. It is owned by Euronext and the national grid companies Fingrid, Energinet, Statnett, Svenska Kraftnät, and Litgrid, and have wholly owned subsidiaries Nord Pool AB and Nord Pool Finland Oy. Nord Pool AS has 360 trading customers in about 20 countries. These include public and private energy producers, energy intensive industries, large consumers, distributors, funds, investment companies, banks, brokers, utility companies and financial institutions.
