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REMIT - Wholesale Energy Market Integrity and Transparency

Market design·Topic·4 min read

title: "REMIT - Wholesale Energy Market Integrity and Transparency" type: wiki topic: market-integrity primary-source: eur-2011-1227-remit.md updated: 2026-04-11 tags: [remit, market-integrity, ofgem, wholesale, prohibition, insider-dealing, market-manipulation]

REMIT - Wholesale Energy Market Integrity and Transparency

Regulation (EU) No 1227/2011, as retained in GB

REMIT is the market abuse framework for wholesale electricity and gas markets in GB. It prohibits insider dealing and market manipulation, requires market participants to disclose price-sensitive information, and mandates transaction reporting to Ofgem.

What REMIT does

REMIT fills the gap between financial market abuse law and energy commodity markets. When REMIT was adopted in 2011, it was not clear that the EU's financial market abuse rules applied to wholesale energy trades that were not classified as financial instruments. REMIT created an equivalent framework specifically for wholesale energy.

The regulation applies to anyone who trades wholesale electricity or gas - including contracts for physical delivery, transportation contracts, and derivatives - where delivery is in the UK or EU. The boundary with financial market abuse law (MAR) is maintained: where a wholesale energy product is also a financial instrument under MAR, MAR governs, not REMIT.

In GB, Ofgem (the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority) is the national regulatory authority. The Northern Ireland Authority for Utility Regulation (NIUR) covers Northern Ireland. Enforcement powers derive from the REMIT Regulations 2013 (SI 2013/1389).

Three prohibitions

1. Insider dealing - Article 3

Anyone who holds inside information about a wholesale energy product is prohibited from:

  • Trading on it - buying or selling the product (directly or through a third party) using that information;
  • Leaking it - passing it to anyone outside the normal course of their work;
  • Tipping others - recommending or inducing others to trade on it.

'Inside information' is price-sensitive non-public information about a wholesale energy product. This includes capacity data, planned and unplanned outages, and anything a reasonable trader would use as a basis for a decision.

Key exemptions: transactions to fulfil pre-existing contracts; emergency cover for unplanned outages (with reporting to Ofgem); national emergency situations where market mechanisms are suspended. Transmission system operators (TSOs) have a limited exemption when buying to maintain safe system operation.

2. Disclosure obligation - Article 4

Market participants must publicly disclose inside information about their own business and facilities in an effective and timely manner. This includes capacity, production, storage, and transmission data - including planned and unplanned outages.

Disclosure can be delayed to protect legitimate business interests, but only if: the omission is not misleading, confidentiality can be maintained, no trading decisions are made on the undisclosed information, and Ofgem is notified without delay with a justification.

Where inside information leaks in the normal course of business, the market participant must ensure simultaneous public disclosure. For accidental leaks, disclosure must follow as soon as possible.

3. Market manipulation - Article 5

A single-sentence prohibition: "Any engagement in, or attempt to engage in, market manipulation on wholesale energy markets shall be prohibited."

Market manipulation covers two types of conduct:

  • Transactional manipulation: trades or orders that give false or misleading signals about supply, demand, or prices; that secure an artificial price level; or that use fictitious devices or deception.
  • Informational manipulation: disseminating false or misleading information through any media (including the internet) about wholesale energy markets, where the disseminator knew or ought to have known the information was false.

An attempt to manipulate requires intent; the core manipulation offence can be committed by effect alone.

600 GWh threshold for industrial consumers

Retail supply contracts are excluded from REMIT - but large industrial consumers cross into wholesale market territory above a consumption capacity threshold of 600 GWh per year.

A final customer whose electricity or gas consumption at full production capacity exceeds 600 GWh/year is treated as a wholesale market participant for REMIT purposes. Their supply contracts become wholesale energy products subject to the full REMIT regime.

Individual plants below 600 GWh/year can be excluded from the count if they are in different geographic markets and do not jointly influence wholesale prices. But a single site or an aggregated group above the threshold falls within REMIT.

In practice this captures major energy-intensive industrial facilities: large steel plants, chemical facilities, data centres trading at scale in wholesale markets.

Ofgem enforcement powers

Ofgem's REMIT enforcement powers come from SI 2013/1389 (The Electricity and Gas (Market Integrity and Transparency) (REMIT) Regulations 2013), which remains in force and was not disturbed by Brexit. The regulation independently confers on Ofgem:

  • powers to investigate suspected REMIT breaches;
  • powers to require production of documents and information;
  • powers to impose civil financial penalties;
  • powers to seek injunctions in respect of ongoing or threatened breaches.

These powers were created by SI 2013/1389 when REMIT was first implemented in 2013. The omission of Art 18 (which required Member States to establish penalty regimes) at Brexit did not affect them.

NIUR has equivalent powers for Northern Ireland.

Cross-border SEM complexity

Northern Ireland participates in the Single Electricity Market (SEM) - the all-island electricity market shared with the Republic of Ireland. This creates a distinctive cross-border structure under REMIT:

  • All market participants trading in the SEM are treated as active in Northern Ireland and must register with NIUR.
  • A market participant trading electricity between Great Britain and the SEM must register with both Ofgem and NIUR.
  • NIUR and the GB Authority must cooperate on market monitoring.

Ofgem retains the power under Art 16(2) to request ACER (the EU energy agency) to act where suspected abuse occurs in a member State - preserving a channel for cross-border cases into the EU single market, including cases touching on the SEM and the Republic of Ireland.

GB/EU divergence - REMIT II not adopted

The EU adopted REMIT II (Regulation (EU) 2024/1106) in May 2024. Key additions under REMIT II include:

  • extended transaction reporting covering LNG trades and cross-border capacity;
  • new manipulation categories for algorithmic trading;
  • internal compliance requirements for market participants;
  • strengthened ACER coordination and enforcement.

REMIT II does not apply in GB. GB retained the 2011 regulation as amended at Brexit and has not announced an equivalent update as of April 2026.

The practical consequence: GB wholesale market participants operating across GB and EU jurisdictions face two distinct legal regimes. The EU framework is stricter on algorithmic trading conduct and LNG reporting. This is one of several areas where GB energy market regulation is diverging from the EU framework on its own timetable.

Primary source

Full canonical text with clause index, verbatim definitions, and amendment history: /knowledge/sources/legislation/eu-retained/eur-2011-1227-remit.md