CO2 price hike drives German power prices to six-year-high

Amid rising prices for carbon emissions and coal, Germany’s wholesale power price for one-year futures has reached its highest level in six years, Nora Kamprath Buli writes for Montel News. At 50.10 euros per megawatt hour (MWh), prices reached their highest level since 2012 and might go up even further in the near future, she writes. A drop in French nuclear power output, plant curbs due to Europe’s recent heat wave and weak winds helped drive power prices up as well, she writes. 
In a separate article in the Daily Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes that the carbon price hike in the European Emissions Trading System (ETS) has made emissions “the best performing ‘commodity’ in the world,” with contracts having “decoupled completely from energy prices and global raw materials”. Germany’s Berenberg Bank told the newspaper that the carbon price could rise from just over 20 euros per tonne at present to 100 euros by 2020, warning that companies will struggle to keep pace with price developments, though other analysts expect a much slower growth rate.

Read the Montel article in English here and the Daily Telegraph article in English here.