Getting energy communications strategy right in the age of distrust and insularity.

Released at the World Economic Forum in Davos in the final week of January 2026 and drawing on approximately 34,000 respondents across 28 countries, the Edelman Trust Barometer report is a useful free annual read of public sentiment. The full 49-page report is worth the download, but here is my view on what it teaches the energy business communicators on getting the strategy and tactics ready for the challenges of now and beyond.

Strategy review

Strategic playbooks need re-thinking, as public trust hits an all-time low

The biggest message of the report is that public trust is approaching rock bottom, with 70% of respondents report an unwillingness to trust those with different values, backgrounds, or information sources.

I don’t like to catastrophise, and yet this is a crisis. The findings describe something deeper than the familiar story of declining trust in institutions. The public seems to have crossed over from being divided and resentful to becoming intolerant, as people are demonstrating active refusal to hear from, or associate with, anyone outside their own narrowing belief systems.

This insularity makes the trust gap that the energy and big industrials already face an even more difficult problem for communicators, as they are now faced with something I think of as distrust by design. Everything that is associated with a group that is not aligned with one’s own existing beliefs is automatically considered wrong or untrue. The energy industry has already experienced this, and it poses a huge challenge to the energy transition, which, by the physical nature of the interconnected energy systems and economies, requires cooperation and interoperability of different groups with different beliefs. Cooperation and interoperability require trust, or at least agreement.

In the practical terms of communications strategy, it means that some of your audiences may no longer be reachable through the channels and by the tactics you have been relying on. It is important to note that by reachable, I don’t mean the fact of getting your message in front of the right eyeballs, or meeting with the stakeholder you seek to dialogue with. That may very well continue and worse yet, show up positively in the visibility measures - which is to say that those often measure the wrong metric.

The right thing to track in reach is whether your message is heard and considered as a legitimate source of plausible truth when making decisions. That is what measures success of a strategy, not the number of impressions received, or meetings attended.

Distrust by design in practice is something like this:

If, for example, I’ve decided that I don’t trust anyone that works in fossil fuels, I’ve already convincingly concluded to myself that your data can’t be trusted, regardless of how solid it is. I will listen to you, but hear only the elements that confirm my conviction. Say, I’m a regulator who identifies with a green movement. I may listen to you, because perhaps I have to, or because I think of you as a necessary evil for the short term, but either way our conversation is unlikely to move the needle toward reaching a sustainable agreement. This is despite you having been taking all the right steps - documenting, reporting, sharing. Distrust persists. It is frustrating, but it also makes sense in the context of insularity, and it means that the strategy needs a rethink.

Today, to earn trust from, or at least reach agreement with, stakeholders from different belief groups, requires first to pierce through the thick veil of insularity, otherwise you'll be fighting an illusory problem, while the real one gets bigger.

In practice, this is often thought of in industry as "they just lack knowledge to understand us, so we have to educated them." This is a false start when there is distrust. None of your education efforts will land when you're not seen as a reliable source to begin with.

Distrust by design is perhaps the main enemy of industrial communication strategies today. So, how to overcome this enemy with a new strategy?

Without going into the weeds, these are the base steps. The first is to recognise whether distrust by design exists within your stakeholder interactions. The second is to study the design element by listening and learning about the group belief system and how it is different from your own. The third is to build a new strategy with tactics that directly address the grievances and beliefs held dear by this group, so you can move from insularity to a new point of common understanding. That lays the groundwork necessary for your communications tactics to lead to results, not just impressions.

The good news is that the same right tactical steps of being transparent by documenting and reporting will continue to apply then. What needs to change are the frame, the approach, and the narrative. Those elements help integrate your communication activities and get you closer to the result of having your message received the way you intend.

The simple summary of all this is that building an effective communication strategy in an insular world starts with more listening and studying the stakeholders and audiences than talking. To pierce through an insular belief system, you will need both, new things to say and different ways to say them.

Tactical intelligence

Now, I will briefly highlight some of the tactical value that the report's findings offer to the energy communicators to significantly up their impact.

Digital Creators command remarkable influence - lean in.

Close to half of respondents said they trust an influencer. The more striking finding is that if a trusted influencer endorses a service or company that the respondent already distrusts, roughly 60% said they would continue to trust the influencer — and would also consider extending trust to the previously distrusted company.

Digital creator and social tactics are practically non-existent in the B2B industrial and energy space, and this is a missed opportunity. If used right, they are a secret weapon for building public trust, and they can work even against a backdrop of existing scepticism. They could be effective tools for breaking through the insularity barrier and addressing distrust when they follow a clear strategy.

So, this does not mean that oil and gas executives need to make a run on the Instagram and the Kardashians -- please let's definitely not do that. But, the opportunity of doing more to integrate social media and digital creator universe in outreach strategies is valuable and somewhat inevitable. This is an area of undeniably growing importance and impact, and the choice isn't really whether to get on board, but when, how, and on whose terms.

NGO's now trail business on trust - build on the advantage.

For the first time, business is viewed as more ethical than NGOs. Despite their media presence, their advocacy platforms, and their influence on government policy, NGOs now sit in the same low-trust cohort as government and media.

When asked which institutions they trust to “do what is right,” respondents scored business at 64%, NGOs at 58%, media at 54%, and government at 53%.

This was, for me, the most unexpected result in the entire report. NGO's tend to have significant influence in the policy circles and in many institutional realms, which makes it natural to assume that this would extend into the public opinion realm, but it turns out that the landscape has changed so much that it is no longer the case. According to the Edelman report, NGO's face the largest deficit between what is expected of them as trust brokers and how they are actually perceived.

For those of us who have long considered NGOs to be natural allies (or foes) in building social licence and stakeholder credibility, this is a call for a recalibration. Business, it turns out, is now the institution people are most willing to believe in, which is both an opportunity and a responsibility. Seize it!

The world is at peak pessimism - give it hope.

Only a third of respondents believe the next generation will be better off. That figure has dropped significantly year-over-year across most countries. The prevailing mood is one of fatigue, disillusionment, and what I characterise as peak myopic individualism, which often translates into the “the system is rigged against me” type of beliefs. This is bad for society and bad for business.

(Two notable exceptions stand out, both in Africa. Nigeria and Kenya are trending in the opposite direction, with markedly higher optimism about the future of the next generation.)

Why does it matter for energy comms? It signals that the public is starved for a morale boost, and the industry can lean in to be a beacon of hope, instead of the blame catcher. It can lead by example, showcase the value of skilled work, and get the world excited again by the marvel of technology, creation, and big engineering that empowers economies and lives. Datacentres and AI have made the invisible importance of the energy systems visible again, creating a good moment for changing the message.

The Trust Brokering tactic.

The report proposed trust brokering as a tool to remedy insularity barriers. I find it compelling and highly complementary with the industrial communications notes shared above.

The tactic focuses on the common, more than on the disparity, and suggests surfacing shared interests between the insulated parties and essentially translating their needs, goals and realities for one another. Therefore, it also requires understanding the differing belief systems and what drives them. The most important tenet is that trying to force change on people is a failing strategy.

A trust broker can be a person, an organisation, or an institution that is trusted by each stakeholder group facing a shared problem.

The report outlines several practical steps for business on how to apply this tactic internally and externally, including:

• encouraging interaction between groups and partnering with unexpected organisations;

• building and instilling a shared identity and strong internal culture;

• ensuring CEOs lead by example and are visibly engaged;

• and shifting from a “multinational” posture to a “polynational” one by increasing local visibility and investing meaningfully in the communities where you operate.

The final word.

The 2026 Trust Barometer paints a picture of a world that is more insular, more pessimistic, and more sceptical than ever, and yet, paradoxically, more willing to trust business than any other institution. For those of us working in corporate communications, reputation strategy, and stakeholder engagement, this brings a warning, defines a mandate, and offers a challenge.

The warning is that traditional communications and engagement approaches are becoming obsolete and need a re-think to tackle distrust by design and integrate communications with real business outcomes.

The mandate is to help businesses see and implement this, because the ones that do and embrace the change will define the next era of corporate reputation and may well turn public hopelessness into empowerment to build a better world.

The challenge is to be equally objective and inquisitive in the examination of our belief systems and those of others. Untested convictions make for weak communication outcomes, so we need to often check our premises.

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If you want to discuss your comms strategy or trust building opportunities with us, book a complimentary diagnostic call below - we’d be delighted to help set your communications for success in an increasingly insular and noisy world.

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