The energy transition is reshaping power and commodity markets at an unprecedented pace—but it is no longer the only source of disruption. At Energy Exemplar’s Xcelerate conference, in Amsterdam, Thomas Piper, Head of Global Market Analysis at RWE Supply & Trading, examined how geopolitics, policy shifts, and rapid renewable deployment are combining to create heightened volatility across gas, carbon, and power markets.
Piper described today’s environment as one of uncertainty and turbulence, driven by politics, regulation, and changing investment behavior. For analysts and planners, the challenge is no longer simply understanding fundamentals but interpreting them in markets increasingly shaped by short-term information flows.
Trade tensions, evolving sanctions, ongoing global conflicts, and shifting regulatory priorities all inject noise into markets already undergoing rapid physical change. Forward curves now react to political statements and real-time news as much as supply-demand fundamentals.
“The market is headline and tweet driven,” Pipe observed. “The geopolitical and micro-news flow is challenging [for energy markets] right now”
In this environment, short-term price movements can diverge sharply from fundamentals, even as those fundamentals remain critical for long-term investment and system reliability.
Gas markets illustrate this dynamic clearly. European prices have experienced sharp swings and wide daily trading ranges, influenced by impacts like mild weather, and regulatory intervention. In particular, the relaxation of gas storage requirements altered seasonal spreads almost immediately.
Carbon markets face a similar tension. Weak industrial activity has softened near-term emissions demand, while longer-term supply remains structurally constrained by declining caps and the Market Stability Reserve. Piper described this as “the paradox of the carbon market,” where analysts may be bearish in the short term but bullish over the medium term. Financial investor positioning further amplifies volatility, complicating interpretation of price signals.
In power markets, the energy transition is increasingly visible at the hourly level. Rapid solar deployment has led to frequent midday oversupply and negative prices, while steep evening ramps test system flexibility. Piper highlighted periods when German solar generation exceeded 50 GW, forcing the system to absorb large volumes of low-cost power.
“We are usually dipping around zero,” Piper said, “but at weekends you see prices that can be massively negative.” At the opposite extreme, low-wind, low-solar conditions have produced scarcity events with sharp price spikes.
At the same time, coal and lignite exits continue to reduce dispatchable capacity. “We have an increasing loss of flexible capacity,” Piper noted, increasing reliance on gas and other fast-ramping resources. Grid constraints, redispatch, and growing volumes of behind-the-meter generation further reduce transparency and complicated system operations.
These dynamics create a new set of modeling challenges. Data quality and consistency are critical when markets respond rapidly to both physical conditions and political signals. Piper emphasized that this remains a core constraint for analysts. “The biggest challenge is still data quality and stable data flows,” Piper said. “You want daily overnight runs, but data sources can be faulty, formats can change, and you need to be confident that what you’re modeling is actually reliable.”
Beyond data infrastructure, analysts must contend with several structural shifts that complicate forecasting:
Embedded generation and distributed batteries intensify these challenges. Because they sit behind the meter, Piper explained, “they are not really measured … they are just kind of part of the demand.” Extreme outcomes are no longer anomalies but features that models must explicitly capture.
This is where advanced market simulation platforms such as PLEXOS® fit. In volatile environments, the value of modeling is not to predict every news-driven price move, but to provide a defensible, physics-based anchor for decision-making.
PLEXOS® grounds analysis in the operational realities of the power system—generation, transmission, fuel supply, emissions constraints, and demand—while enabling structured scenario analysis around policy, weather, and market uncertainty. As Piper noted when discussing modeling philosophy:
“It’s really tricky how you model tweet-driven trading,” Piper noted. “That’s why fundamental modeling is still something you should do—to have your basis, and to understand whether the market is overreacting or underreacting.”
Chronological dispatch and security-constrained modeling allow analysts to examine renewable-driven volatility, ramping requirements, negative prices, and scarcity events in detail. Integrated fuel and emissions modeling support consistent analysis of gas burn and carbon allowance demand, helping distinguish short-term market noise from longer-term structural drivers.
In markets defined by rapid change and political uncertainty, modeling is not about eliminating risk, it is about understanding it. By combining high-quality data, structured scenarios, and physically grounded simulation, platforms like PLEXOS® help analysts move beyond reactive forecasting toward durable insight.
As Piper concluded, “the market is still showing the right signals,” but only for those equipped to interpret them. In a world shaped by news- and policy-driven volatility, anchoring decisions in system fundamentals is becoming essential for navigating the next phase of the energy transition.