Podium vs Print: cheap power has not reached Germany's auction yet

The podium. On Wednesday three ECB economists published a long blog post on why the euro area has withstood this year’s energy shock better than feared¹. One passage is about electricity. “The expansion of renewable generation capacity is reducing wholesale electricity prices in many countries,” they write, because more renewables mean fewer hours in which a gas plant sets the price¹. The evidence they cite is specific. In Spain the share of hours in which gas set the price fell from around 80% in 2020 to just above 20% in the first nine months of 2026; in France it fell from around 60% to around 20%¹. Unlike in 2021–22, they say, the latest shock hit countries with more renewable and nuclear power less hard¹.

The print. Germany’s day-ahead auction tells the other half. The daily average price for the Germany-Luxembourg zone was €169.93 per megawatt hour over 1 to 21 October 2026, against €94.14 for the same days of 2025². Desk arithmetic: that is about 80% higher. Wednesday’s delivery day cleared at €211.94². September averaged €144.82, with a high of €256.55 on 14 September².

The gap. The two are not contradicting each other as much as it looks. The blog does not name Germany, and its claim is about structure, measured over years¹. The auction is about this autumn, in one bidding zone, on days when the wind and the sun decide how often gas is needed at the margin. The chart shows the shape plainly: through the spring and early summer, months after the shock began, German power mostly stayed between about €77 and €110; it was the autumn, with a second wave of higher gas prices, that lifted it^1,2.

Verdict. The podium is right about the direction, and the print is right about the bill. What closes the gap is in the same blog post: “further integration of EU electricity markets, including more cross-border interconnections and investment in grids”, so that cheaper renewable electricity “could flow where it is needed”¹. That is dull machinery: cables, substations, permits. It is also the only part of the argument that turns a Spanish average into a German invoice. Nothing here is advice.