Snapshot - 24 September 2026
Gas and power both retreated on Wednesday as forecasters pushed temperatures across north-west Europe above seasonal norms into early October. Front-month NBP fell to the low 180s p/therm, with the whole of the near curve out to Q1-27 giving up two to three pence, while UK day-ahead baseload dropped close to £10/MWh to the low £150s. It was a demand story rather than a supply one: Norwegian output is still heavily restricted by the Troll compressor failure, and the UK system nonetheless opened long with linepack building. Prices have firmed again this morning, recovering a good part of Wednesday's fall.
Power had extra help from the weather in a second sense. Wind output more than doubled as a share of the generation stack, gas-fired generation fell back sharply, and renewables recovered to more than half the mix. Strong midday solar flattened the daily shape enough to leave the peak block trading slightly below baseload, an unusual but well-explained inversion. Forward power moved far less than the prompt, with the front winter and Calendar 27 both down less than one per cent, held up by a storage picture that is still around 10 percentage points behind last year. Intraday volatility remains the standout feature, with system prices swinging across a range of more than £130/MWh in a single day.
Elsewhere, the commodity complex refused to move as a bloc. Crude gained close to four per cent as diplomacy at the United Nations stalled, while gas and carbon both fell, which tells you the gas move was about the weather and not about geopolitics. Coal drifted marginally lower, LNG benchmarks eased, and European carbon gave back a little after political pushback against the current policy path. UK allowances were flat, leaving the discount to European allowances broadly unchanged. Sterling softened against both the dollar and the euro.
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