Cold snap combined with rising fuel costs pushes electricity prices in Japan's Tohoku and Tokyo to four-year highs.

Zhitong Finance APP has learned that due to unusually cold weather in the Tohoku and Tokyo regions and rising fuel prices, Japan's spot electricity prices soared to multi-year highs over the weekend. Data from the Japan Electric Power Exchange showed that on Sunday, next-day electricity prices in Tohoku and Tokyo rose 17% and 11% respectively from a week earlier, to 40.18 yen (US$0.25) per kilowatt-hour. This was the highest price since September 2022 and the first time since then that the 40 yen per kilowatt-hour mark has been breached. On the same day, Japan's national average spot electricity price rose 14% to 34.44 yen/kWh.