UK Energy Market Report - 2 September 2026

Every contract on both boards rose on 1 September, day-ahead gas by 15.90p and day-ahead power by 17.8%, and Britain lost its place as the cheapest gas hub in Europe for the first time in this run.

The market reopened after the bank holiday and repriced everything at once. All eleven NBP contracts and all eleven UK baseload contracts settled higher on 1 September.

Day-ahead gas added 15.90p, the largest single-session gain this report has recorded, and day-ahead power 23.20 £/MWh. Brent put on 7.4% and Asian LNG went through $25.

One thing broke a run that has held all month. Spain settled below Britain, so NBP is no longer the cheapest hub on the European board.

Gas Market

NBP Day-Ahead settled at 178.00p on 1 September, up 15.90p or 9.8%. That is the biggest one-session move on the prompt in this run, larger than the 6.00p of 27 August.

The near curve went with it and moved as a block. Oct-26 rose 13.47p to 178.29p, Q4-26 13.41p to 180.77p, Winter-26 13.09p to 178.42p and Q1-27 12.75p to 176.02p, a band of 7.8% to 8.2%.

The far curve rose too but at half the pace. Summer-27 gained 7.96p to 117.02p, Winter-27 6.94p to 113.13p, Summer-28 3.31p to 77.20p and Winter-28 3.17p to 84.28p, between 3.9% and 7.3%.

The carry at the front nearly closed. Oct-26 at 178.29p now sits 0.29p above the day-ahead, against 2.72p on Friday, so the prompt has caught almost the whole of the front month in one session.

Both winter measures widened. Q4-26 leads Q1-27 by 4.75p against 4.09p on Friday, and Winter-26 stands 61.40p above Summer-27 against 56.28p.

Britain is no longer the cheapest hub in Europe. NBP settled 178.00p and Spain’s PVB settled 177.53p, 0.47p below it, with PEG at 180.91p, TTF 181.07p, THE 182.30p, Austrian VTP 185.01p and PSV dearest at 192.79p.

The NBP discount to TTF narrowed to 3.07p from 4.43p on Friday. Britain has held the cheapest slot every session this report has covered, so the change matters more than the half penny does.

Supply is the reason and it is Norwegian again. TotalEnergies reports LNG deliveries into Europe nominated near 200 mcm/day on 1 September, roughly half the previous session, against Norwegian exports of about 292 mcm/day.

This morning Gassco has Norwegian exit nominations lower again at 285 mcm/day, with deliveries to Britain down a further 6 mcm/day, and planned maintenance at Dvalin starting on the day-ahead and expected to take around 8 mcm/day out through to 26 September.

The 07:00 flow table’s own change column is not like-for-like today. It sets this morning against a 14:00 read from Monday carrying UKCS production at 21.20 mcm/day and Langeled at zero, neither of them a full day’s nomination.

Against the 07:00 figures this report published yesterday, Langeled is 4.20 lower at 18.00 mcm/day and UKCS production 2.50 lower at 81.60, while demand is 6.44 higher at 109.56 and linepack 17.03 lower at 318.57 mcm. The system opened 7 mcm/day short.

IUK exports to Belgium remain at zero for a second session and LNG sendout is unchanged at 8 mcm/day.

At the 09:29 stamp this morning the board is marked higher again, Day-Ahead at 180.50p, Oct-26 182.29p, Q4-26 185.15p and Winter-26 182.83p, between 2.50p and 4.41p above settlement.

The card below summarises where NBP contracts settled on Tuesday against the previous session.

Electricity Market

UK day-ahead baseload settled at 153.70 £/MWh on 1 September, up 23.20 or 17.8%, the largest one-session gain on the prompt in this run. Peak rose 8.33 or 5.8% to 151.41 £/MWh.

Because baseload rose three times as fast, the two blocks crossed over again. Peak now settles 2.29 £/MWh below baseload, having been 12.58 above it on Friday. That is the third reversal in four sessions.

The forwards rose in a tighter band than gas did. Q1-27 gained 8.89 to 143.54 £/MWh, Winter-26 8.55 to 143.64, Oct-26 8.34 to 137.72 and Q4-26 8.22 to 143.73, between 5.8% and 6.6%.

The two fuels have gone back to disagreeing about winter. Gas widened its Q4-over-Q1 premium to 4.75p; power narrowed its own to 0.19 £/MWh from 0.86, so the power board now prices the two winter quarters as very nearly the same thing.

October is still the cheapest month on the power board at 137.72 £/MWh, 9.54 below Nov-26 and 15.98 below the day-ahead.

Now to own yesterday’s index, because it missed on both boards and in both directions. This report carried gas Day-Ahead indicated at 173.70p and it settled 178.00p, out 4.30, with Oct-26 out 2.95, Q4-26 2.57 and Q1-27 0.95, all five contracts under on a board that rose across its whole width.

The power side is the sharper lesson. This report flagged that Day-Ahead and Oct-26 were both marked at a flat 140.00 £/MWh, and called a round number on two different contracts the tell that the index was thin. Day-Ahead settled 153.70, out 13.70 under; Oct-26 settled 137.72, out 2.28 over. The same mark on the same board resolved in opposite directions.

The part-day system price row produced its worst result yet. This report published 76.01 to 191.90 for 1 September, stamped 07:18 and 07:48, with the standing warning that a pre-stamp print is a running extreme rather than a final one.

The day closed 22.90 to 205.00, the minimum at 14:48 and the maximum at 18:48. The floor came out 53.11 lower and the ceiling 13.10 higher, so this is the first scored session in which both sides moved, and the largest minimum miss recorded.

That leaves 182.10 £/MWh between the cheapest and dearest half hours of Tuesday. Today so far reads 108.50 to 205.88, stamped 04:48 and 06:18, same warning.

The nuclear position is unchanged at 1,945 MW of impact across five units. The 1,920 MW scheduled between 4 and 7 September has not moved either, and the first of it, Heysham 2 reactor 8 at 660 MW for 80 days, lands the day after tomorrow.

Wind is the reason the prompt moved so far. The forecast puts wind and solar near 8,400 MWh today against a seasonal norm around 9,900, the low point of the eight-day outlook, before it roughly doubles the norm at about 14,350 MWh tomorrow.

Coal contributed nothing across the last fifteen days on either the daytime average or the peak, so CCGT covers that gap, running near 4 GW through the middle of the day against a fifteen-day peak above 13 GW.

This morning’s power index needs the usual caution and then some. Day-Ahead is marked at 116.00 £/MWh, 37.70 below settlement, while every forward on the board is marked between 2.01 and 13.19 higher. Quote it with its timestamp and build nothing on which way it points.

Oil, Carbon and Global Commodities

Brent M+1 settled at 94.65 $/barrel on 1 September, up 6.55 or 7.4%, and TotalEnergies has it extending those gains to six-week highs this morning.

The driver is the United States and Iran returning to open confrontation, with Washington threatening further strikes after an exchange of fire Tehran says killed five civilians.

Coal API2 for Cal-27 rose 4.52 to $134.23/tonne, a 3.5% gain and the highest level of this run.

Carbon was the exception on an otherwise rising board. EUA Dec-26 added 0.61 to €83.34 while UK ETS Dec-26 fell 0.18 to £59.21, the only contract in this report to settle lower.

At Tuesday’s 1.1675 sterling rate the European allowance is worth about £71.38, putting the UK scheme £12.17 a tonne below its European equivalent against £11.53 on Friday. That is the widest the discount has been in this run, and it widened on a day gas rose 9.8%.

In LNG, JKM front month rose to $25.07/MMBtu from 23.18, which TotalEnergies puts at the highest since March, with TTF spot at 24.50 and NBP spot 24.06. The JKM premium over TTF was near unchanged at 0.57 $/MMBtu.

Henry Hub rose 2.8% to $2.90, so British gas now costs 8.3 times American gas at the same moment, against 7.8 on Friday. Sterling firmed to 1.1675 against the euro and eased to 1.3515 against the dollar.

Commodity	Price	Change (day)
Brent Crude (M+1)	$94.65/barrel	+7.4%
Coal API2 (Cal-27)	$134.23/tonne	+3.5%
EUA Carbon (Dec-26)	€83.34/tonne	+0.7%
UK ETS (Dec-26)	£59.21/tonne	-0.3%
JKM LNG (front-month)	$25.07/MMBtu	+8.2%
TTF Gas (spot)	$24.50/MMBtu	+8.3%

Storage and Supply Outlook

TotalEnergies puts EU inventories at 65.1% full on 30 August, around twelve percentage points below the same point last year, with daily injections running near 3.9 TWh.

Britain has not moved for six readings. The country map holds Britain at 49% while France sits at 69%, Italy 82%, Spain 73%, Germany 52% and the Benelux pair at 46% and 53%.

The site board gave a little back today, which is the first net drawdown of this run. Stublach eased two points to 75% and Aldbrough two to 53%, with South Hook a point lower at 70% and Isle of Grain at 28%. Hornsea was the only riser, up one to 57%.

Holford, Holehouse Farm, Dragon and Hill Top were unchanged, and Rough and Humbly Grove remain at zero. The aggregate map still reads 49%, so treat this as marginal rather than a turn in the season, and worth a second reading tomorrow.

The arrivals schedule into North West Europe carries ten cargoes and 1,018 mcm between 2 and 7 September. Six are American and account for 604 mcm, with one Dutch and one Nigerian into Fos, one Russian into Montoir on 6 September and one whose origin is not stated.

None of them is British, for a second consecutive schedule. Britain sits bottom of the country map with roughly nine weeks of injection season left.

On weather, the eight-day forecast runs above the seasonal mean until it does not. UK temperatures read near 16.8C today and peak at about 18.8C tomorrow against a mean near 15.3C, then drop to roughly 14.7C and 14.2C on 8 and 9 September, below a mean of about 15.0C.

TotalEnergies has the EC46 run cooling across most of the outlook and going below seasonal normal from the middle of next week.

What This Means for Your Business

Q4-26 gas closed on 7 August at 139.23p and settled Tuesday at 180.77p. That is 41.54p a therm in under four weeks, worth roughly £14,174 a year on a 1 GWh gas load.

More than a third of it arrived in a single session, after a weekend nobody could trade. A renewal fixed on Friday and one fixed on Tuesday are separated by 13.41p on that contract alone.

That is the case for watching the Norwegian maintenance calendar rather than the headline price. Kollsnes, Sleipner and now Dvalin have each moved this curve more than any domestic factor has.

The shape still costs more than the level. A business whose gas year starts in April is looking at Summer-27 at 117.02p; one starting in October is looking at Winter-26 at 178.42p for the same commodity.

That 61.40p gap is calendar rather than commodity, worth about £20,951 a year on 1 GWh, and it widened by 5.12p on Tuesday because the near curve was bought harder than the far one.

On electricity the prompt moved 17.8% in a session while the peak block moved 5.8%, and the two crossed over for the third time in four days. None of that reaches a headline unit rate. It lands on the shape of your half-hourly consumption, which is where a site running plant into the evening feels it.

The watch list is short and all of it is near-term. Dvalin runs to 26 September, Heysham 2 reactor 8 takes 660 MW off on 4 September, Brent is at six-week highs on Iran, and Britain enters September 49% full and no longer filling.

For a view tailored to your consumption profile and renewal window, speak to one of our energy consultants today.

Previous report: UK Energy Market Report – 1 September 2026