Gas turbines and combined cycle: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Gas turbines come from a few makers with long order books. Costs are nickel and cobalt superalloy blades, precision machining and engineering, while demand follows gas plant building, data centre power needs and grid backup, so prices move with order cycles.
Price index US PPI: steam, gas and other turbines and generators index · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026What its price moves with
Selected linkGas turbines and combined cycle and Natural gas
Monthly changes 0.04 little or none correlation 12-month changes 0.00 little or none correlation Last 5 years 0.05 monthly changes Lead or lag none No clear lead or lag Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Gas turbines and combined cycle ≈ 130.1 × (Natural gas)0.03 R² 0.02 On this fit, a 10% higher natural gas price goes with a 0.3% higher gas turbines and combined cycle price over the long run. Units: index and $/mmbtu. The fit is loose, so treat the function as a rough guide.Chart: Gas turbines and combined cycle and Natural gas prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Gas turbines and combined cycle price against Natural gas price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2006), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Gas turbines burn natural gas, so cheap, plentiful gas encourages new plants. Yet monthly moves correlate at only 0.04 with the European gas price, because turbine prices are set in multi-year contracts and orders respond to policy and power demand more than fuel prices.
little or none co-movement month to month · 234 months Show chartsThe hottest blades and vanes are made from nickel superalloys. Nickel's swings are far larger than the index, which correlates at 0.01 monthly, since metal is a small part of a turbine's price compared with engineering, machining and the makers' pricing power.
little or none co-movement month to month · 234 months Show chartsCobalt strengthens superalloys used in turbine blades and combustors. Supply is concentrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, so shortages raise costs for makers, but cobalt has no public price series here and its effect on turbine prices is indirect.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Industrial gas turbines and jet engines share designs, alloys and often makers. Their indices correlate at 0.15 monthly and 0.29 yearly, a modest link because aircraft engine prices follow airline orders while power turbines follow electricity demand.
little or none co-movement month to month · 234 months Show chartsThe geothermal proxy is a closely related turbine index. Monthly moves correlate at 0.68 and yearly at 0.53, mainly because both cover overlapping turbine and generator products from the same factories, so this reflects shared costs rather than a geothermal market effect.
moderate co-movement month to month · 169 months Show chartsMakers now design turbines to burn hydrogen blended with gas, and eventually pure hydrogen, to cut emissions. This could link turbine demand to hydrogen supply, but for now the indices show no real link, with yearly moves correlating at just 0.13.
little or none co-movement month to month · 193 months Show chartsHow 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.