Gas as a volatility multiplier in congested power systems

In South-East Europe, gas does not merely influence electricity prices through marginal cost. It multiplies volatility by interacting with structural congestion in the power grid. When gas tightness coincides with constrained transmission, the price impact is no longer incremental; it becomes discontinuous. This interaction explains why electricity markets across the region experience abrupt price separations and extreme […]

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Gas storage as regional insurance, not seasonal inventory

Gas storage in South-East Europe is still widely discussed as a question of how much gas is in the ground. Markets, however, increasingly price storage based on how fast that gas can be mobilised when power systems lose flexibility. The distinction is critical. In this region, storage does not function primarily as a seasonal arbitrage tool; it functions as regional

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When LNG stops being a safety valve in South-East Europe

Liquefied natural gas is widely perceived as the ultimate backstop for gas-constrained power systems: flexible, global, and theoretically unconstrained by pipeline politics. In South-East Europe, that perception is increasingly at odds with market outcomes. LNG does provide strategic diversification, but it fails as an operational safety valve during the exact moments when power prices break away from

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The gas–power elasticity gap between South-East Europe and Central Europe

The same gas shock produces very different electricity outcomes depending on where it lands. In Central Europe, gas price movements tend to pass through into power prices in a measured, relatively predictable way. In South-East Europe, identical gas signals often translate into outsized, abrupt electricity price responses. This elasticity gap—the difference in how gas tightness converts

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Gas tightness versus gas price: Why deliverability matters more than TTF in South-East Europe

In South-East Europe, the most disruptive electricity price events are rarely explained by movements in the Dutch TTF benchmark alone. They are explained by gas tightness—the moment when physical gas cannot be delivered quickly enough to where power systems need it most. This distinction between price and deliverability has become decisive for both power traders and industrial electricity buyers across

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Gas as the marginal shock transmitter in South-East European power prices

Gas has become the most misunderstood variable in South-East Europe’s electricity markets. It no longer needs to dominate generation volumes, fuel mixes, or annual averages to dominate outcomes. Its true role today is that of a marginal shock transmitter: the mechanism through which system stress is converted into abrupt price escalation, spread dislocation, and cost overruns.

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Carbon convergence as a timing risk in South-East European power trading

Carbon convergence has become the most consequential timing risk in South-East European power trading. Direction is broadly agreed: carbon costs will rise, coal and lignite will exit, and market coupling will deepen. What remains deeply uncertain—and now decisively priced by markets—is when these forces will align, how fast they will propagate through cross-border trade, and whether grids and flexibility will arrive

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The structural mismatch between system value and market remuneration

South-East Europe’s power markets are increasingly characterised by a widening gap between where system value is created and where revenue is actually captured. Assets and systems that stabilise the grid, suppress volatility, and prevent cascading failures generate outsized regional benefits, yet market remuneration mechanisms remain largely national, energy-centric, and backward-looking. This mismatch is no longer a theoretical inefficiency;

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Flexibility assets as regional trading instruments rather than national arbitrage tools

Flexibility assets in South-East Europe are no longer best understood as domestic arbitrage machines smoothing hourly price curves. They are increasingly regional trading instruments whose value is realised during short, violent episodes of system stress rather than through steady cycling between day-night spreads. The decline of dispatchable baseload, rising congestion frequency, and shrinking system inertia

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Congestion-driven volatility and the reordering of regional price hierarchies

South-East Europe’s power markets are undergoing a quiet but decisive reordering in which congestion, rather than generation cost, increasingly determines who clears at scarcity prices and who does not. The traditional hierarchy—where lower-cost systems reliably price below higher-cost neighbours—has been eroded by structural transmission constraints, declining dispatchable depth, and synchronized stress events. In this environment,

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