Belgium's Energy Market: A Trader's Guide

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Belgium's energy market might seem like a peculiar obsession for UK traders - after all, it's a country better known for waffles and EU bureaucracy than market volatility. But beneath its orderly exterior lies one of Europe's most fascinating energy experiments: a nation attempting to simultaneously phase out nuclear power, then reverse course completely, while cramming in as much solar capacity as physically possible and hoping their neighbours will sort out the mess when the sun doesn't shine. This combination of policy U-turns, extreme renewable penetration, and deep interconnection with both UK and continental markets creates a perfect storm of trading opportunities. The conventional view sees Belgium as a simple arbitrage play - buy low during solar peaks, sell high during evening demand. But as our analysis reveals, Belgium's energy market is actually a complex derivative on the success of every neighbouring country's energy policy, multiplied by weather volatility and divided by political decision-making that makes Brexit look straightforward. For UK traders willing to look beyond the obvious plays, Belgium offers a masterclass in how modern energy transitions create not stability, but spectacular and profitable chaos.

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If you read our Belgium energy market report you might rightly focus on the nuclear U-turn - and what a U-turn it was. In May 2025, Belgium's parliament voted 102-8 to formally repeal the 2003 nuclear phase-out law. Not amend. Not defer. Repeal. The EUR 15 billion ENGIE/state joint venture deal to keep Doel 4 and Tihange 3 running closed in March 2025, and both units are now in long-term operation (LTO) overhauls. Belgium went from "we're closing everything" to "we want 8 GW of nuclear by 2035" in the space of three years. It's like watching someone sell their house, pack everything up, get to the moving truck, then decide actually they quite like the place and want to build an extension. Classic Belgium.

But while everyone's debating the nuclear renaissance, the real action is in the volatility which Belgium's renewable surge is creating. Renewables matched nuclear at 34% of generation each in 2025 - a first. Solar alone hit 10.1 TWh, up 21% year-on-year. And here's where it gets properly interesting: Belgium recorded over 520 hours of negative electricity prices in 2025, smashing the previous record of 222 hours in 2023. That's more than three weeks of being paid to use electricity. During one glorious moment in August 2024, renewables covered 93% of total consumption. Imagine running a baseload gas plant in that environment. You'd need a stiff drink just to cope with the price swings.

The conventional wisdom says gas is dead in Belgium - it accounted for just 19% of generation in 2025 (12.6 TWh). But here's what the smart money knows: gas isn't dying, it's becoming the ultimate peaker asset. When the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow (and the French nuclear fleet inevitably has another "anomaly"), someone needs to keep the lights on. Those gas plants are shifting from boring baseload to exciting peaker assets. The volatility in gas demand is going to be spectacular, and volatility, as we know, is where traders make money. Meanwhile, battery storage is arriving at scale: ENGIE commissioned its 200 MW / 800 MWh Vilvoorde BESS in November 2025, and Belgium's CRM auctions have contracted 1.6 GW of new-build battery capacity for delivery by 2029-30. These batteries will compete with gas peakers for the most valuable settlement periods - and they respond faster.

Now, about those interconnectors. The Nemo Link (1,000 MW to the UK, 99% availability) and the Interconnector gas pipeline are basically toll roads for electrons and molecules. Everyone treats them like simple arbitrage tools - buy cheap Belgian solar power at noon, sell expensive UK power at dinner. But here's the beautiful part: Belgium's prices aren't really Belgian prices. They're whatever mess is happening in Germany with their north-south grid bottlenecks creating "loop flows" that can spike Belgian prices to €500/MWh. It's like betting on Belgian weather but finding out the forecast is actually determined by what's happening in Bavaria.

The funny bit is that Belgium's entire renewable strategy is premised on their neighbours playing along. Those solar panels are great when the sun shines, but Belgium is essentially building a grid that assumes it can dump excess power on its neighbours at noon and import from them at 6 PM. It's the electrical equivalent of assuming your neighbours will always let you borrow sugar. What happens when everyone in Northwest Europe has the same solar peak at the same time? Or when France needs its nuclear power for its own heat pumps? These are the questions that create trading opportunities.

Speaking of opportunities, let's talk about the Princess Elisabeth Energy Island. Belgium is building an artificial island in the North Sea to be an energy hub - the first caissons were submerged in April 2025, though the offshore wind tender has been delayed to Q1 2026. If this sounds like something from a Bond villain's business plan, you're not wrong. But it's also going to be a massive nexus for offshore wind and new interconnectors (including the Nautilus link to the UK). The conventional play is to bet on increased cross-border capacity. The contrarian play is to bet on construction delays and technical problems creating temporary bottlenecks and price spikes.

And then there's a structural change that most commentators have barely noticed: Belgium launched 15-minute market time units (MTU) on 1 October 2025. The day-ahead market now has 96 price periods instead of 24. This isn't just an administrative tweak - it's a fundamental shift in how Belgian power is priced. With 520+ hours of negative prices already in the old hourly regime, imagine what happens when you can price the exact 15-minute window when solar peaks or drops. The granularity creates more extreme prices at the tails, more arbitrage opportunities between adjacent periods, and more value for fast-response assets like batteries. Traders who are still thinking in hourly blocks are leaving money on the table.

Then there's the carbon pricing circus. ETS2 launches in 2027, targeting transport and heating fuels. The Belgian Planning Bureau thinks it'll be €60/tonne and will increase fuel oil costs by 21%, gas by 16%. Everyone's modelling smooth pass-through to consumers and orderly demand destruction. But what if Belgian households, facing 16% higher heating bills, just... don't switch to heat pumps as planned? What if they burn more wood? Or move their energy-intensive activities to different hours? The demand response assumptions baked into everyone's models are heroically optimistic.

Here's our contrarian take: Belgium's energy market is becoming a leveraged bet on everything going exactly according to plan across multiple countries simultaneously. The nuclear life extensions will hit snags (they always do). The renewable build-out will cluster in ways that create more extreme price volatility than anyone expects. The gas plants everyone thinks are obsolete will print money during squeeze periods. And those interconnectors everyone sees as simple arbitrage tools? They're going to become the main characters in a very volatile story about what happens when every country's energy plan assumes they can rely on their neighbours.

The smart trade isn't betting on Belgium's energy transition succeeding or failing. It's betting on it being messier, more volatile, and creating more dislocations than anyone's planning for. In a market where 93% of consumption can come from renewables one moment and gas plants become critical the next, the only certainty is uncertainty. And uncertainty, properly traded, is profit.

So while everyone else is modelling smooth transitions and efficient markets, remember: Belgium once decided to phase out nuclear, changed its mind, and now wants to double down. In a country that took 541 days to form a government, assuming smooth execution of complex energy plans is... optimistic. Trade accordingly.

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Here are a few more fascinating details buried in the report that reveal the true complexity of Belgium's energy market:

• Belgium's electricity consumption per capita has been falling since 2006 (from 9,079 kWh to around 6,900 kWh in 2025), yet total consumption held steady at 80.1 TWh as population grew. They're still planning to more than double consumption by 2050 through electrification. This massive reversal in consumption trends could catch demand forecasters completely off-guard.
• Net electricity imports hit 14 TWh in 2025 - Belgium is now structurally dependent on its neighbours for about 17% of consumption. With Doel 4 and Tihange 3 offline for LTO overhauls, this dependency will persist until at least late 2026. Any disruption to French or German exports ripples straight through.
• The CRM auction results tell a story: 1.6 GW of new-build battery storage contracted for 2029-30, alongside demand-side management and existing gas capacity. Battery is winning on economics. Industrial demand response is becoming a real, priced market asset rather than just a theoretical flexibility option. Smart traders should be modelling this as a new volatility dampener.
• The Federal Planning Bureau admits Belgium will likely achieve only 32% emissions reduction by 2030 versus the planned 47%, and may not reach net-zero by 2050 under current policies. This gap between ambition and reality suggests either dramatic policy interventions are coming or significant carbon credit purchases will be needed.
• The Interconnector gas pipeline achieved 99.8% reliability over 20 years, making it one of the most dependable pieces of energy infrastructure in Europe. This exceptional reliability is priced into current spreads, but any deviation from this performance would create immediate trading opportunities.
• The L-gas to H-gas network conversion completed in 2024 streamlined gas flows and enhanced regional flexibility. Combined with Belgium's Zeebrugge LNG terminal handling record throughput, the country's role as a continental gas transit hub is strengthening even as domestic gas generation declines.

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