Snapshot - 31 July 2026
Wholesale energy prices retreated on Thursday as cooler weather across Northwest Europe eased the demand pressure that had built through July, and traders trimmed part of the risk premium attached to the conflict in the Middle East. UK gas fell across the board, with the day-ahead contract dropping roughly 4 per cent and front-month and Winter 26 contracts both easing around 3 to 4 per cent. Winter 26 gas is now some 11 p/therm below the high it set in the final full week of July, though it remains around 30 per cent higher than where it started the month. Continental hubs moved in step, with the Dutch benchmark down close to 4 per cent.
Power told a more mixed story. The forward curve tracked gas lower, with winter and calendar contracts down between 1 and 3 per cent, but the prompt went the other way. Day-ahead baseload rose almost 7 per cent as wind generation ran well below normal and the nuclear fleet continued to carry heavy outages, leaving gas-fired plant as the largest single source of generation. Strong midday solar pushed peak prices below baseload for the day, an unusual pattern that reverses once the days shorten into autumn. Intraday prices swung sharply, with the highest and lowest half-hours of Friday morning almost £90/MWh apart.
Across the wider complex, crude fell for a second session and is now more than 10 per cent below where it stood a week ago, helped by an increase in tanker movements through the Strait of Hormuz. Coal was little changed and carbon eased modestly in both the European and UK schemes, with UK allowances continuing to trade at a meaningful discount to their European equivalent. Sterling firmed against the dollar, offering a small offset on imported fuel costs. Storage remains the market's central concern: European inventories are around 11 percentage points below last year at this point in the injection season, and that shortfall continues to underpin the winter contracts even on down days.
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