POWER: EU Mid-Day Power Summary: CWE March Power Holds Onto Gains

CWE front-month power futures are holding onto gains today with higher EU gas prices and forecasts for colder weather. Nordic March power is trading rangebound with an upward revision in temperatures in March weighed against a downward revision in the region’s hydro balances and gains in neighbouring markets. 

• Nordic Base Power MAR 25 down 0.2% at 45 EUR/MWh
• France Base Power MAR 25 up 1.4% at 88.57 EUR/MWh
• Germany Base Power MAR 25 up 1.3% at 103.64 EUR/MWh
• EUA DEC 25 down 0.5% at 80.47 EUR/MT
• TTF Gas MAR 25 up 1% at 52.58 EUR/MWh
• TTF front month is regaining ground with support from cool temperatures in NW Europe adding further pressure to storage withdrawals as the market weighs the impact from rising US trade tensions with China.
• EU ETS December 2025 have reversed earlier gains to trade lower on the day, diverging from moves in EU gas prices, with weakness from EU equities. Latest COT data showed speculator positioning in EU ETS futures on the ICE exchange turned again more bullish for the sixth consecutive week with net long positionings still at the highest since the week of 10 September 2021.
• The latest bi-weekly Polish Primary Market Auction (Phase 4 - CAP3) cleared at higher at €77.87/ton CO2e, compared with €76.71/ton CO2e in the previous auction.
• The planned maintenance at the 1.01GW ElecLink interconnector between France and the UK will end five days earlier on 5 February 14:00CET.
• The planned maintenance at EdF’s 1.33GW Paluel 3 nuclear reactor has been shortened by two days to end on 11 February.
• Investment Funds reduced their net short positioning in ICE German power futures for the second consecutive week, with short positioning hitting its lowest in the month of January.
• Swiss hydropower reserves last week declined by three percentage points to 32.8% of capacity, marking the slowest week-on-week decline this year.
• Elia has delayed the 3.5GW Princess Elisabeth Island project by around three years as the signing of the HVDC contracts for the park was postponed due to soaring costs and market volatility.
• Italian hydropower reserves last week slowed the rate of their decline from the previous week, dropping by 0.10TWh to 2.53TWh
• Sweden and Denmark are planning to replace the existing two power interconnectors between Sweden’s SE3 zone and Denmark’s DK1 zone with the new Konti-Skan Connect power link by around mid-2030s.
• Equinor has lowered its renewable capacity target to 10-12GW by 2030, from 12-16GW previously targeted.
• The Baltic TSOs have procured a total of 1.257GW of balancing capacity through the first auction of the newly launched Baltic Frequency Reserves Capacity Market.