In a system where natural gas serves as the primary source of flexibility, balancing the gas network is no longer a background operational task. It has become a central determinant of electricity market stability. What once appeared as a technical issue confined to pipeline pressures and storage levels now directly shapes power prices, dispatch decisions, […]
When gas balancing becomes a power-market problem Read More »
In theory, the spark spread is a straightforward concept. It represents the margin between the price of electricity and the cost of generating it from natural gas, adjusted for efficiency and carbon costs. In practice, particularly in South-East Europe, the spark spread has evolved into something far more complex. It is no longer just a
Spark spread in practice: A SEE focus Read More »
Energy markets are often described as short-memory systems. Prices spike, conditions normalise, and attention moves on. This perception is increasingly misleading. In a tightly coupled energy system, short-term disruptions rarely fade without leaving structural traces. Even when prices retreat and flows stabilise, the system that emerges afterward is subtly but materially different from the one
Short-term disruptions, long-term consequences Read More »
Volatility used to be treated as a market-specific phenomenon. Electricity was volatile because demand had to be balanced in real time. Gas was volatile seasonally, shaped by weather and storage cycles. Oil was volatile episodically, driven by geopolitics and global supply disruptions. These forms of volatility were analysed separately, hedged separately, and largely expected to
Volatility without borders Read More »
In an integrated energy system, shocks no longer respect sectoral boundaries. What begins as a local disruption, a technical failure, a weather anomaly, or a geopolitical event, increasingly propagates through electricity, gas, and oil markets with speed and intensity that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. The defining feature of today’s energy landscape is
When a shock in one market destabilises the entire chain Read More »
South-East Europe does not sit on the periphery of Europe’s energy system. It sits at its edge in a different sense: the edge where constraints bind first, where volatility appears earliest, and where systemic assumptions are tested under real operating conditions rather than in models. The region is not an exception to Europe’s energy transition.
For most of the modern history of European energy policy, electricity, natural gas, and oil were treated as adjacent but fundamentally separate domains. They were regulated through different frameworks, traded on different venues, analysed by different expert communities, and governed by distinct political narratives. Electricity was a question of grids, generators, and marginal pricing. Gas
For decades, electricity was treated by industry as a predictable input. Prices fluctuated within narrow bands, supply security was largely taken for granted, and energy strategy focused on efficiency rather than exposure. In southeast Europe, this assumption underpinned the region’s industrial model. Competitive labour, proximity to EU markets and relatively stable power costs supported metals,
In the emerging architecture of Europe’s electricity system, flexibility has become the most valuable attribute a power asset can possess. The ability to ramp output quickly, absorb surplus generation, stabilise frequency, or respond to sudden imbalances now matters more than raw installed capacity. Yet while flexibility has become scarce, it has not become fairly priced.
The inclusion of electricity in the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism marks a quiet but profound shift in how power systems at Europe’s periphery are judged, priced, and ultimately integrated. While much of the public CBAM debate has focused on steel, cement, aluminium, and fertilisers, electricity is the only CBAM-covered “product” that is not
EU electricity under CBAM: Why Southeast Europe is structurally exposed Read More »
