District heating and cooling networks: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
District heating networks sell heat from a central source through insulated pipes. Tariffs are usually regulated or contracted and follow the cost of the heat source, often gas, waste or heat pumps, plus the cost of the network.
No public price District heating and cooling networks has no public monthly price series: Tariffs are local and regulated; no common traded price.What its price moves with
Many networks burn gas in boilers or combined heat and power plants, so tariffs rise with gas prices, often after a delay set by the tariff rules. European heat tariffs rose sharply during the gas crisis.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Combined heat and power plants sell both electricity and heat, so the heat price depends partly on power market income. When electricity prices are high, plant owners can offer heat more cheaply.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Large heat pumps are replacing boilers in many networks, drawing heat from rivers, sewage or data centres. Their running cost depends on electricity prices rather than gas, which changes how tariffs move.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Waste incinerators supply cheap base heat to many European networks, paid for partly by gate fees for taking the waste. This makes district heat less sensitive to fuel markets in cities with incinerators.
No public price for waste-to-energy, so the link is explained in words only.Networks use pre-insulated steel pipes for the hot supply lines. Pipes and civil works are the largest capital cost, so steel prices and construction costs set the cost of new networks.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Pre-insulated pipes are wrapped in polyurethane foam inside a polyethylene casing to keep heat losses low. Foam costs follow the chemicals used to make polyurethane, which come from oil and gas.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.