Power-to-X: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
E-fuel cost is mostly the electricity and electrolysers needed to make hydrogen, plus captured carbon dioxide or nitrogen. The products compete with fossil ammonia, methanol and jet fuel, so those prices set the bar they must beat.
No public price Power-to-X has no public monthly price series: Mostly pilot plants; offtake prices are private, no public index.What its price moves with
Electrolysers turn power into hydrogen, the first step in every power-to-X route. Their cost and efficiency, together with electricity price, decide most of the cost of green ammonia, methanol and synthetic fuels.
No public price for electrolysers, so the link is explained in words only.Green hydrogen is the building block for all e-fuels. It competes with hydrogen made from natural gas, so cheap gas keeps the market price of hydrogen low and makes the green premium harder to recover.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Green ammonia combines electrolytic hydrogen with nitrogen from the air. It must compete with ammonia made from natural gas, so fertiliser and ammonia prices decide whether projects in places like India and Australia can sell their output.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.E-methanol combines green hydrogen with captured carbon dioxide and is one fuel option for new container ships. It competes with methanol made from gas and coal, which sets the market price it must match or exceed with green premiums.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Wind and solar power supply the electricity, which is the largest running cost, and projects are sited where wind or sun is strong. Cheaper renewables are the main lever for bringing e-fuel costs down.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Grey hydrogen, ammonia and methanol are made from natural gas, so gas prices set the cost of the fossil products e-fuels replace. The 2022 European gas spike briefly narrowed the gap, while cheap gas widens it.
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.