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German power climbs to EUR 156, spark flips

2 min read

10:16UTC

German day-ahead power cleared EUR 156/MWh on 16 July, up from EUR 126 two days earlier, as cooling demand under the heat dome dragged the clean spark spread from negative into positive.

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Key takeaway

A demand-driven spark spread turned Germany's CCGTs profitable, a margin a cooler week would knock out.

Germany day-ahead power cleared an average EUR 126/MWh on 14 July, EUR 132 on 15 July and EUR 156 on 16 July, climbing on cooling demand as the heat dome held ¹. Day-ahead is the price for next-day delivery; the clean spark spread is what a gas-fired CCGT earns after paying for its gas and its carbon. Run these clears through the standard 49.13% efficiency and 0.365 tCO2/MWh convention, against TTF near EUR 55 and EUA carbon near EUR 80, and the spread swings from roughly negative on 14 July to positive by 16 July.

German combined-cycle plants clear because the heat needs the megawatts, and the margin turning positive is a by-product of power outrunning its inputs rather than any softening in gas. That distinction is the whole trade: a spark spread that widens on power strength behaves differently from one that widens on cheap fuel, because it collapses the moment the heat breaks.

This eases rather than reverses the squeeze the desk logged on 9 July, when gas and power rose together and compressed the same spread . Then the pressure came from the fuel side; now it comes from demand. The CCGT stack is back in the money, but on a footing that a cooler week would knock straight out again.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Gas-fired power stations in Germany make money on the gap between what they pay for gas and carbon permits and what they earn selling electricity. That gap, called the clean spark spread, had been slim or negative for weeks. This week electricity prices jumped because of the heat wave (people running air conditioning), while gas and carbon costs did not rise as much, so gas power plants suddenly became profitable to run again. It is less about gas getting cheaper and more about electricity getting more expensive faster than its ingredients did.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Germany's clean spark spread flips sign whenever day-ahead power climbs faster than its two input costs, gas (TTF) and carbon (EUA), move together. This window that happened because cooling demand pulled German day-ahead from EUR 126 to EUR 156/MWh across three sessions while TTF firmed only modestly and EUA actually eased back under EUR 81 (see the carbon event in this briefing), leaving the power side of the equation to do almost all the work.

The structural precondition is thin renewable output: when wind generation is low during a heat dome, as it has been through this window, German CCGT plant sets the marginal clearing price directly, so any demand spike shows up in the power price with little dilution from cheaper generation displacing it.

What could happen next?

Consequence
A positive clean spark spread gives German CCGT operators an incentive to run harder into the remaining heat window, which in turn supports gas demand even as storage injection slows elsewhere.

Sources:Trading Economics·energyprices.eu (ENTSO-E sourced)

Mentions:Germany →EUA →CCGT →TTF →

First Reported In

Update #27 · TTF hits EUR 55; the arb won't confirm it

Trading Economics· 16 Jul 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Two shocks squeeze the spark, not FR-DE

Continues the 9 July gas-and-power squeeze on Germany's clean spark spread, which now turns positive rather than negative.

Occurred 9 Jul 2026

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This Event

German power climbs to EUR 156, spark flips

The spark margin turned positive because power outran its own fuel and carbon costs, not because gas got cheaper.

Led to

German gas plants priced out of merit

The positive clean spark spread recorded on 16 July inverted to negative by 20 July as gas and carbon costs outpaced power revenue.

Occurred 19 Jul 2026

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Spark stays negative, French edge erodes

The 16 July positive spark inverted again as gas and carbon outran day-ahead power.

Occurred 22 Jul 2026

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German gas plants back in profit

16 July was the prior occasion the spark turned positive, on heat demand under a heat dome rather than on this wind collapse; this is the third such inversion-to-recovery cycle.

Occurred 30 Jul 2026

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Different Perspectives

Belarus

Minsk announced completion of its own 37th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade near Gomel, under plans dating to August 2025 rather than a response to any single frontline event this window, keeping its hedge of hosting the war without formally joining Russia's mobilisation drive.

European Union / Operation IRINI states

Italy, Greece and Poland boarded the sanctioned tanker Toa Payoh off Pantelleria under a standing EU mandate rather than a national decision, extending enforcement from the Channel and Baltic and the Black Sea and Azov into the Mediterranean. Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto praised the crew; the captain's refusal to produce documentation left detention unconfirmed.

Poland and the NATO eastern flank

Warsaw's Coordination Team said explicitly its forces tracked the 30 July missile incursion and were ready to shoot it down, then flew air cover for an EU tanker interdiction three days later. Poland is simultaneously the war's nearest spillover victim and a contributor to enforcing sanctions against the state causing that spillover.

Ukraine (government, defence establishment and civilians)

Kyiv runs its manpower crisis through acting Defence Minister Yevhen Khmara, whose formal appointment waits for parliament's 18 August return, and a fortnight-old Commander-in-Chief, Mykhailo Drapatyi. Reported attacks on enlistment officers rose from 5 cases in 2022 to 341 in 2025, reaching Odesa's Territorial Recruitment Centre staff directly on 2 August.

Kremlin and Russian domestic economic voices

Moscow has not addressed July's advance-rate collapse or Sberbank's OFZ warning; Novak's diary ran to OPEC+ quota diplomacy with no diesel item logged since 15 July. Economist Nikolai Korzhenevsky calls the Central Bank's RUB 2.3tn in bank lending effectively deficit monetisation, a framing Sberbank's Skvortsov, with his own institutional interest, has not disputed.

IAEA (Rafael Grossi)

IAEA inspectors logged Zaporizhzhia's 22nd loss of off-site power, ten of them in the last three months, after a thunderstorm knocked out the plant's sole surviving backup line. Grossi reads the accelerating frequency, not any single outage, as the safety signal now that the plant's redundancy is exhausted.