Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2666 actions· ✨ 89 recent

The UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero raised the fixed-bottom offshore wind budget pot for Contracts for Difference (CfD) Allocation Round 7 (AR7) from GBP 900 million to GBP 1.79 billion ahead of results, nearly doubling the subsidy envelope. On 14 January 2026 DESNZ announced AR7 results securing a record 8.4 GW of offshore wind capacity across eight projects at a clearing strike price of approximately GBP 91/MWh (2024 prices), unlocking an estimated GBP 22 billion in private-sector investment. RWE was the largest winner with 6.9 GW (Norfolk Vanguard East/West, Dogger Bank South, Awel y Môr); SSE secured 1.4 GW via Berwick Bank Phase B at GBP 89.49/MWh.

DOE's Loan Programs Office concurrently finalized a conditional loan commitment and financial close on a USD 1 billion interest-bearing loan to Constellation Energy Generation, LLC, funded under the newly created Energy Dominance Financing Program, to help restart the 835 MW Crane Clean Energy Center (formerly Three Mile Island Unit 1) on the Susquehanna River in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania. The reactor shut down in 2019 for market reasons (not safety) and was never fully decommissioned; restart is pending NRC licensing approval and is expected to power roughly 800,000 Mid-Atlantic homes, supporting domestic manufacturing and AI-datacenter power demand. A Pennsylvania Building & Construction Trades Council economic-impact study cited in the DOE release estimates ~3,400 direct/indirect jobs, over USD 16 billion in state GDP, and more than USD 3 billion in state/federal tax revenue over the project life.

Bpifrance Assurance Export, France's state export credit agency, guaranteed GBP 5 billion (~EUR 5.68bn) of lending arranged by a pool of 13 international banks (HSBC Corporate and Institutional Banking as lead/coordinator) to support the construction of the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk, England. The guarantee covers up to 95% of the non-payment risk on export contracts held by French companies (led by EDF, a Sizewell C equity partner) involved in the project. It was announced alongside the project's financial close on 4 November 2025, complementing a GBP 36.6bn term loan facility from the UK's National Wealth Fund that forms the bulk of the project's debt financing.

The Texas Energy Fund (TxEF), administered by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT), finalized a USD 1.12 billion low-interest (3%) 20-year state loan to Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) to fund 60% of the USD 1.88 billion cost of the CPV Basin Ranch Energy Center, a 1,350 MW combined-cycle natural-gas plant in Ward County (Permian Basin), Texas. The loan term runs 28 October 2025 to 28 October 2045; the plant is expected online in 2029 in the ERCOT West Load Zone and is explicitly framed by the state as capacity to serve West Texas AI/data-center electricity demand. This is the fifth loan finalized under TxEF's In-ERCOT Generation Loan Program and the largest single project financed under it to date, taking cumulative TxEF-backed capacity above 3,100 MW.

China's Ministry of Finance, General Administration of Customs and State Taxation Administration jointly issued Announcement 2025 No. 10, restructuring VAT refund support across the power-generation sector effective 1 November 2025. Offshore wind power producers gain a new 50% immediate VAT refund running through 31 December 2027, while the prior immediate-refund policy for onshore wind power (in force since 2015 under Cai Shui [2015] No. 74) is repealed outright. Nuclear plants approved but not yet commercially operating as of 31 October 2025 receive a 50% collected-then-refunded VAT rebate for ten years from first commercial operation, but nuclear projects approved after 1 November 2025 receive no VAT refund at all. The measure reallocates state fiscal support within China's power sector toward offshore wind and legacy-pipeline nuclear capacity while withdrawing it from onshore wind and future nuclear approvals.

The European Commission approved an EUR 11 billion French State aid scheme to support the construction and operation of three floating offshore wind farms with a combined capacity of roughly 1.5 GW — one off the coast of Southern Brittany and two in the Mediterranean Sea. The scheme, cleared under the Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework (CISAF) adopted by the Commission in June 2025, will run for 20 years and forms part of France's push to meet its offshore wind build-out targets under the Clean Industrial Deal. Support is delivered via a contracts-for-difference mechanism that guarantees generators a strike price against wholesale power prices.

The UK's National Wealth Fund, the state-owned investment bank, committed a term loan facility of up to GBP 36.6 billion to finance construction of the Sizewell C nuclear power station in Suffolk. The facility forms the bulk of the project's construction-phase debt, alongside a GBP 5bn Bpifrance Assurance Export-guaranteed loan tranche from a French bank pool. It was announced on 22 July 2025 alongside the UK government's 44.9% equity stake in the project as its largest shareholder.

On 12 June 2025 the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero announced approximately GBP 200 million (subject to business case) in development funding for the Acorn carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at St Fergus, Aberdeenshire, and for National Gas's SCO2T Connect pipeline, which repurposes 175 miles of existing gas pipeline plus 35 miles of new-build pipeline to carry CO2 captured at Grangemouth to North Sea storage. The award forms part of a wider GBP 9.4 billion Spending Review 2025 commitment to carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), alongside a parallel award to the Viking CCS project in the Humber. Government cites up to 15,000 jobs at Acorn's peak construction and the safeguarding of an estimated 18,000 existing North Sea jobs.

In the Spending Review 2025 (delivered 11 June 2025), HM Treasury committed "over £2.5 billion" for nuclear fusion, explicitly including support for the UK's STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) programme to design and build a prototype fusion power plant on the site of the former West Burton A coal power station in Nottinghamshire. The commitment covers the multi-year Spending Review period and is administered through the UK Atomic Energy Authority. STEP construction is expected to begin in the 2030s, with first operations targeted for 2040, and the government cites over 10,000 jobs supported by the programme.