🧃Silicon Voltage Valley

Welcome to today’s edition of The Strawman, your daily climate newsletter. Today we’re heading to Denmark, where a cluster of caffeinated coders and traders are turning energy markets into a nerdy rollercoaster ride — and regulators aren’t sure whether to high-five them or unplug their servers

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Traders, Turbines and TikToks

In Aarhus and Aalborg, two otherwise quiet Danish cities, a trading renaissance is underway. Forget oil-slick Wall Street suits — this new breed of energy traders looks more like a Hackathon afterparty. Companies like InCommodities and Danske Commodities are slinging electrons and forecasts at breakneck speeds, using algorithmic wizardry to buy and sell electricity in Europe’s increasingly volatile grid.

This isn’t just a niche trend: the rapid rise of renewables has created a market full of chaotic supply (blame wind gusts and surprise sunshine) and unpredictable demand. It’s exactly the kind of chaos that turns energy trading into a real-time strategy game — one where the scoreboard flashes €1bn in annual profits.

The Algorithms Are Coming

The volatility of clean energy is both a headache and an opportunity. As renewables surge past 25% of Europe’s energy mix, short-term fluctuations — cloud cover over Bavaria, or a sleepy wind farm in the North Sea — can swing prices from zero to €600 per megawatt hour. That’s where the bots come in.

These aren’t your average Excel macros. Some of these machine learning models can read market signals insanely fast. Companies are building proprietary software that adapts and learns on the fly, identifying patterns humans would miss and sometimes even trading with other bots.

Of course, this has regulators sweating. Automated “robot battles” have already triggered market distortions, and watchdogs are worried that lightning-fast trades could be sending false signals — or just making the whole system more jittery than a barista after a triple espresso.

Robot Wars and Regulatory Whack-a-Mole

All this turbocharged trading is now catching the eye of European regulators, who are trying to keep up with a market evolving faster than the rulebook. From the Netherlands to Brussels, officials are raising red flags about transparency, market manipulation, and the risk of algorithmic misfires.

Companies like InCommodities insist they want to lead with “best practices” — but also admit that guidance from regulators is virtually nonexistent. It's a classic case of the tech speeding off in a Tesla while the law is still stuck looking for parking.

Meanwhile, traders are busy hiring, coding, and dreaming up new ways to wrangle this data tsunami. And with automated trading expected to account for most of Europe’s energy market volume in the next few years, one thing is clear: whoever controls the algorithm might just end up controlling the grid.

The takeaway:
Denmark’s trading nerds are quietly building the future of energy markets — and possibly breaking them at the same time.