Clean energy markets are catching up with the tools they need to scale. REsurety has launched CleanTrade, the first regulated platform for trading clean energy contracts in the U.S., following approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
With this move, CleanTrade is now designated as a Swap Execution Facility (SEF), placing it under the same regulatory framework as other major financial trading platforms. This gives institutional investors, corporates, and energy traders a regulated venue for executing financially-settled clean energy contracts, such as virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs)—long a standard tool for corporate renewable energy procurement.
Cargill and Mercuria were the first to complete a transaction on the platform, indicating early traction among large market players.
As clean energy scales rapidly—more than 90% of new U.S. power generation capacity last year came from renewables—the supporting market infrastructure has struggled to keep up. Historically, deals have been negotiated via brokers and third-party service providers, creating inconsistent pricing, limited transparency, and cumbersome compliance processes.
CleanTrade aims to streamline this process by providing full end-to-end transaction infrastructure, from automated deal documentation to Dodd-Frank compliance reporting. The platform also introduces visible market pricing, enabling faster execution and better price discovery for buyers and sellers alike.
The CleanTrade platform is designed to meet the needs of both new market entrants and existing contract holders. Alongside SEF-enabled VPPA trading, the marketplace supports a broader range of clean energy instruments—including physical PPAs and project-specific renewable energy certificates (RECs).
REsurety’s CEO Lee Taylor highlighted that clean energy markets have long lacked access to the kind of risk management and price transparency tools standard in fossil fuel trading. “With this CFTC approval, CleanTrade now fills that huge void in the energy markets.”
Peter Freed, a founding partner at Near Horizon Group and formerly energy strategy lead at Meta, noted that CleanTrade fills a long-standing gap in the market. “CleanTrade allows users to discover and capitalize on the 100-gigawatt corporate market of high-value VPPA contracts — and also allows clean energy buyers to manage the risk of contracts they’ve already signed.”
