September 4, 2025
The first-of-its-kind, CFTC-approved platform is poised to revolutionize clean energy transactions
REsurety hit an incredible milestone: CleanTrade received approval from the CFTC to operate as a Swap-Execution Facility (SEF), marking the first marketplace for clean energy where all buyers, sellers, and traders can negotiate and execute deals on one platform.
VP, Business Development,
CleanTrade
To get a closer look at how CleanTrade is simplifying complex transactions and accelerating the clean energy transition, we sat down with CleanTrade’s VP of Business Development, Owen Glubiak.
How do you explain CleanTrade in one sentence?
For those familiar with trading platforms, the easiest way to explain it is that CleanTrade is “The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) for renewables.” This is feedback that I often receive from customers who are seeing the platform for the first time.
For people less familiar with trading platforms, CleanTrade is a platform that provides critical liquidity to project-specific VPPAs, PPAs, and project-specific RECs by streamlining the complex process of buying, selling, and trading clean energy. It enables fast execution through end-to-end workflows and offers visibility into market pricing and terms, along with deep insight into project- and contract-specific financial and environmental metrics.
You joined REsurety for CleanTrade – what made this platform stick out?
I’ve been tracking the clean energy market for a long time, starting with the rise of corporate procurement through VPPAs around 2014. Over the past decade, I’ve seen firsthand the gaps in the market, especially when comparing clean energy to other major commodities like oil and natural gas. The clean energy market has lacked the sophisticated tools for risk management for operating projects (and associated VPPAs) and liquidity that are standard in traditional commodity trading.
The biggest limiting factor has always been the intermittent nature of renewable energy generation, which requires “as-generated” or VPPA (Virtual Power Purchase Agreement) structures. Unlike traditional energy sources such as natural gas, which have a predictable and constant output, the generation of renewable energy varies based on weather. Other major trading platforms, like ICE and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), do not facilitate these transactions due to the fixed volume requirements they have in their platforms. Without sophisticated analytics, it’s difficult to compare these contracts in an “apples-to-apples” way. CleanTrade solves this by providing visibility into market pricing and terms, as well as deep insight into project- and contract-specific financial and environmental metrics.
For years, the manual, bilateral nature of clean energy deals has meant you’re racing against the clock—and often losing. It’s nearly impossible to move fast enough to seize a short-term market opportunity or hedge against sudden risk. Now, with REsurety’s data-driven platforms, the clean energy market can finally achieve the velocity and maturity of traditional energy trading.
What made CleanTrade stand out to me is that it’s the perfect bridge. It combines the compliance rigor required for conducting transactions with the end-to-end workflows you’d expect from major trading platforms. While other platforms are information-only ‘walled gardens,’ CleanTrade is designed to be a CFTC-compliant marketplace, providing the transparency and liquidity that the market needs to mature. It’s the only transaction platform for clean energy that offers both real-time market insights and project-specific data, including financial performance and emissions impact. This holistic approach is what convinced me that CleanTrade is the solution the industry has been waiting for.
What types of questions from customers get you really excited? What can you offer as a solution?
I get most excited when customers ask about how CleanTrade can help them move beyond a single transaction to build a truly optimized and de-risked clean energy strategy.
Questions like,
“How can we use the platform to hedge our portfolio and mitigate risk?”
or
“How can we compare different projects – not just on price, but on their real-world carbon impact?”
are great because they highlight the platform’s full potential.
As a solution, I can offer a comprehensive end-to-end procurement toolkit that addresses these strategic questions directly. I can show them how to use CleanTrade to:
- Underwrite risk and value: The platform provides advanced analytical forecasts, allowing customers to simulate historical and forecasted settlements under multiple scenarios. They can also view curated public and modeled generation data to inform their decisions.
- Optimize for maximum impact: Customers can use our proprietary project-specific carbon impact data to optimize their procurement for environmental effectiveness, moving beyond basic REC accounting.
- Streamline processes: The platform automates the entire workflow, from bid/offer sourcing and key-term negotiation to automated Dodd-Frank compliance reporting and post-transaction settlement tracking.
- Access a diverse marketplace: CleanTrade provides a comprehensive discovery tool to find and evaluate projects and offers, including both new builds and operational projects, across various contract types and geographies. The platform offers unprecedented visibility into market pricing and terms.
Visit https://resurety.com/cleantrade/ to learn more and schedule a demo with our team.