The spot price rises on the drop in wind and nuclear demand, as well as higher French demand
European power prices rose Thursday as the main wind producer Germany was expected to experience a sharp drop in wind production output, and French nuclear availability fell sharply.
LSEG's analysis painted a positive picture. It noted that the demand for electric heating in France was increasing as temperatures dropped.
The French day-ahead baseload electricity gained 45.5% since the close of trade, reaching 80 euros ($83.34 per megawatt-hour) by 0945 GMT.
The German equivalent contract was 52.3% higher at 72.3 Euro/MWh.
LSEG data shows that the German wind output will drop 5.4 gigawatts per day, reaching 38.8 GW by Friday. France is expected to lose 5.6 GW and reach 8.5 GW.
The French nuclear availability fell seven percentage points, to 81%, as Tricastin 1 reactors and Paluel 4 were in short unplanned outages, and Flamanville 3, in a planned, but short outage.
The weekend is expected to see a 6 GW drop in Germany's power consumption, which is currently at 55.5 GW. In France, the demand is expected to increase by 3.2 GW and reach 63.7 GW.
The German power price for the year ahead increased by 0.4% to 87.5 Euro/MWh.
After a close of 67.5 euros, the French 2025 baseload was not traded.
The European CO2 allowances in December 2025 increased by 0.7% to 65.34 Euros per metric tonne.
The German energy statistics group AGEB reported that Germany will be a net importer in 2024 of 23.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. Exports dropped by 9%, while imports grew by 15%.
It estimated that German carbon emissions for the year decreased by 3%. The decline was attributed to the decrease in coal consumption, which dropped by 12.5% when comparing imported hard coal with domestic brown coal.
BDEW, a German industry association for the utility sector, reported that national gas consumption was up by 3.3 percent in 2024. $1 = 0.9599 euro (Reporting and editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri).
(source: Reuters)
