Traders of Trust: Europe’s energy markets trade in uncertainty, yet invest in Hope

Trade is one of the oldest forms of human connection.

Before we built parliaments, before we drafted treaties, we traded. With salt, spices, wool, and ideas, we laid the groundwork for cooperation — not through charity, but through exchange. Through trade, we learned to rely on one another. To embrace their rules and form some together.  We learned to give and receive trust, to value it, and to put a price on it.

Trust is a confident relationship with the unknown – Rachel Botsman

And yet, when we speak about today’s energy system, we rarely speak of trade in these terms. Energy trading has been cast as distant, opaque, even opportunistic, something that happens behind closed doors, full of jargon and invisible profits.

But what if we’ve been looking at it the wrong way?

After my recent conversation with Mark Copley , CEO of Energy Traders Europe, I’ve come to see energy traders not just as risk managers or market technicians, but as traders of trust — essential actors in a system that relies on cooperation, coordination, and shared responsibility.

Trading as the Foundation of Stability

It is easy to romanticise wind turbines and solar farms (I do, especially if they’re seamlessly integrated into the landscape). They are symbols of progress. But what holds the system together, what makes it work on a daily, hourly, even millisecond basis, is far less visible: the flows, the exchanges, the trades. The trust, and its price.

Energy trading isn’t about making fast money. It’s about balancing risk.

It’s what allows your electricity bill to remain stable despite market swings.

It’s what enables renewable energy developers to secure long-term financing.

And it’s what kept Europe’s energy system from collapsing during its most severe crisis in decades.

Mark described traders as the “oil in the machine”, but I might go further: in a world of permanent disruption, traders are among the quiet architects of resilience.

They make trust tangible: between producers and consumers, between countries, across borders and political systems. They translate uncertainty into action. That’s not technical work: it’s relational.

We, as human, are the one deciding to whom we give your trust.

What the Crises are Teaching Us

When Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe’s gas supply was thrown into chaos, energy traders were not the ones causing the crisis. They were the ones working to contain it.

Before governments had fully reacted, traders were already on the move, redirecting gas flows, managing contracts, hedging risks, and absorbing the shockwaves so that the lights stayed on and the heating didn’t cut out.

The system bent, but it did not break.

Yes, some actors made significant profits, as you would expect in any high-risk sector responding to extreme volatility. But the system functioned because of the trust embedded in those trading relationships: the infrastructure, the contracts, the legal frameworks, and, most importantly, the people behind them.

Let us not forget: systems don’t hold because we design them perfectly. They hold because people show up and make them work, over and over again, especially when it matters most.

Markets for a Just Transition

In some corners of the climate debate, markets are treated with suspicion, seen as instruments of inequality or relics of a system we must leave behind. But what I see, especially after speaking with Mark, is that markets are like ships, they can be steered. And when they are, they can become engines of fairness, not just efficiency.

We’ve already chosen the destination: Europe has committed to climate neutrality. The only question left is how we get there, and how we take people onboard.

This said, markets will be essential to:

• Pricing risk accurately, so that clean energy becomes the obvious economic choice.
• Ensuring renewable investments are bankable, scalable, and accountable.
• Creating a system that is not just decarbonised, but also resilient to shocks and accessible to all.

Markets cannot do everything. There is no magic, invisible hands moving seamlessly for the greater good. They need good regulation, enforcement, and monitoring for constant improvement. But without them, we risk building a transition that is expensive, fragile, and fragmented.

A just transition requires functioning systems, and functioning systems require trust. Trust, as we’ve learned across centuries, is not declared. It is built. Through regulation, through accountability, and often, through trade.

This Is a European Moment

Mark said something that has stayed with me ever since we spoke:

“This is the time for Europe to really come together, to build from the foundations we’ve created, to create something which is strong in a global context and which gives us better, more secure, more decarbonised, more affordable energy in the long run. But that’s going to need a bit of change.”

And I agree.

This is not the time for retreat, nor for siloed strategies that pretend we can each go it alone. It is time to deepen the very relationships, commercial, political, social, that have held under pressure.

Europe was built on the premise that trade creates peace. The same principle applies now: cooperative markets, shared rules, mutual obligations. This is how we turn chaos into coordination, to overcome crisis, to accelerate the transition we need.

Captions are auto generated

A Hive of Hope

After our conversation, I’ve been returning to this image: a hive of bees.

Unseen, tireless, crucial.

Energy traders, like bees, don’t work in the spotlight. But without them, the system cannot pollinate. It cannot function. It cannot serve its purpose.

As we build a new energy world, we need all kinds of actors: engineers, regulators, community organisers, consumers, and yes, traders.

Because building trust at this scale, in this moment, is not idealism.

It is infrastructure.

And if we do it right, we won’t just decarbonise.

We’ll build a Europe that is fairer, stronger, and more united than ever.

So let us keep trading — not only in energy, but in ideas, in responsibility, in hope.

🎧 Listen to my full conversation with Mark Copley on your favourite podcast platform & on YouTube https://youtu.be/_RInKV7BPMg

#TradersOfTrust #EnergyTransition #EnergyMarkets #ClimateAction #Europe #Cooperation #Sustainability #HopeInAction Mark Copley Energy Traders Europe