Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 31 July 2025 Israel's Investment and Industrial and Economic Development Authority (part of the Ministry of Economy and Industry) published Director General's Order 4.82, opening an ILS ~300 million (~$81m) grant channel to help industrial facilities convert fuel/electricity consumption systems and improve energy efficiency, in order to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Support covers up to 40% of qualifying investment (50% for small applicants), with a bonus for projects that also handle regulated refrigerants during equipment scrapping. The application window closed 15 September 2025.

The European Commission approved, under EU State aid rules, a Swedish strategic reserve scheme worth EUR 300 million to safeguard security of electricity supply in emergency situations. The reserve remunerates generation, demand-side-response and storage capacity held outside the normal market and dispatched only when demand exceeds available supply, typically during winter peak-demand periods. Capacity will be selected through a competitive, technology-neutral, non-discriminatory bidding process, with the scheme authorised to run until 2035.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) committed AUD 44.9 million to Calix Limited to build a demonstration plant for its Zero Emissions Steel Technology (ZESTY), targeting up to 30,000 tonnes per year of low-carbon hydrogen direct reduced iron (HDRI) and hot briquetted iron (HBI) using renewable electricity and hydrogen instead of coking coal. The funding builds on prior ARENA-funded engineering studies and also supports early-stage engineering for a larger commercial-scale ZESTY plant, positioning low-emissions iron/steel as a strategic priority industry for Australia.

The Canada Infrastructure Bank closed a CAD 24 million (approx. USD 18 million) loan to the Onimiskiw Opitciwan Limited Partnership, owned by the Atikamekw of Opitciwan First Nation in Northern Quebec, to build and operate a 4.8-megawatt biomass cogeneration facility. The plant will burn bark, sawdust and woodchips from an adjacent sawmill to generate electricity and process steam, displacing an estimated 4.6 million litres of diesel per year and cutting over 11,000 tonnes of emissions annually for the remote, diesel-dependent community of 2,500 people.

Iberdrola Clientes' GRHENA project — a green industrial-heat generation hub at the Chemical Industrial Park of Tarragona, Spain, designed to produce up to 648 GWh/year of steam via electric boilers powered by renewable electricity — was awarded a EUR 53,938,146 (~USD 63.5 million) grant under the European Commission's Innovation Fund. The Grant Agreement was signed on 22 July 2025 as part of a batch of six Innovation Fund 2023 general-call projects (worth EUR 319 million combined) that collectively target 24.1 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent avoided over their first ten years of operation. GRHENA is described as the first large-scale demonstrator of direct industrial electrification of heat generation, replacing natural gas at the Tarragona chemical complex.

On 16 June 2025 the European Investment Bank (EIB) signed a EUR 1.6 billion loan facility with French and Spanish transmission-system operators RTE and Red Eléctrica to finance the Bay of Biscay electricity interconnection, the first submarine power link between the two countries. First tranches totalling EUR 1.2 billion were signed at EIB headquarters in Luxembourg; the project separately holds a EUR 578 million EU Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) grant. The 400 km link (300 km submarine, connecting Cubnezais, France to Gatika, Spain) will raise cross-border exchange capacity from 2,800 MW to 5,000 MW and is expected to enter service in 2028.

On 12 June 2025, the African Development Bank Group's Board of Directors approved a USD 184.1 million financing package for the Obelisk Solar Project in Qena Governorate, southern Egypt — billed as Africa's largest solar-plus-storage project, combining a 1-gigawatt solar photovoltaic installation with a 200 MWh battery energy storage system. The AfDB package is composed of USD 125.5 million from ordinary resources, USD 20 million from the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA), USD 18.6 million from the Canada-AfDB Climate Fund, and USD 20 million from the Climate Investment Funds' Clean Technology Fund. The Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company will off-take the power under a 25-year agreement. Total project cost exceeds USD 590 million, with commercial operation targeted for Q3 2026.

The Canada Infrastructure Bank committed CAD 108.3 million (approx. USD 78.9 million) to the 102.2-megawatt Mesgi'g Ugju's'n 2 (MU2) wind farm in the Gespe'gewa'gi (Gaspesie-Iles-de-la-Madeleine) region of Quebec. The financing comprises a CAD 15.8 million equity loan to the Mi'gmawei Mawiomi Business Corporation (MMBC) — CIB's first Indigenous equity loan in Quebec — and a CAD 92.5 million construction loan for the project as a whole. MU2 is a partnership between MMBC, representing the Gesgapegiag, Gespeg and Listuguj Mi'gmaq communities, and Innergex Renewable Energy Inc., with a 30-year power purchase agreement with Hydro-Quebec.

The Canada Infrastructure Bank closed a CAD 97 million (approx. USD 70.7 million) loan to finance the 84-megawatt Wedgeport Wind project in the Municipal District of Argyle, Nova Scotia. The project is a partnership between Elemental Energy, Stevens Wind and Sipekne'katik First Nation (SFN), and comprises 12 Nordex seven-megawatt turbines built under Nova Scotia's Rate Based Procurement process. It is CIB's second partnership with Elemental Energy and SFN following an earlier Nova Scotia wind deal.

Export Finance Australia (EFA), Australia's export credit agency, signed a AUD 100 million loan to QGIF Swan Bidco Pty Ltd during FY2024/25, publicly disclosed via EFA's 2024/25 transaction register (published 2 September 2025) and dated 29 May 2025 by Global Trade Alert. QGIF Swan Bidco is the acquisition vehicle QIC's Global Infrastructure Fund used to take Pacific Energy Limited (ASX: PEA) private in 2019-20; Pacific Energy builds, owns and operates off-grid power generation for mining companies and remote communities, chiefly in Western Australia. The transaction is booked under EFA's Commercial Account, industry code "Mining," goods/services "Other Electricity Generation."

UK Export Finance (UKEF) confirmed support with a maximum liability of approximately GBP 98.5 million (~USD 132m) for Iraq's Five Substations Project, categorised as a Category B (site-specific environmental/social impact) transaction. The guarantee backs a Standard Chartered-arranged facility to the Iraqi Ministry of Finance financing UK Grid Solutions Limited (a GE Vernova subsidiary) to design, supply, construct, install, test and commission five new electrical substations — New Al Rifai, Al Rumaitha, North Kirkuk, Al Khalidiya South and Al Sawada — as part of Iraq's Ministry of Electricity national grid development plan.

Japan's government, acting through the "Comprehensive Countermeasures Headquarters for US Tariff Measures" (established after the April 2025 Trump reciprocal-tariff announcement), decided on 27 May 2025 to draw JPY 388.1 billion from FY2025 budget reserves for tariff-cushioning relief. JPY 288.1 billion reactivates the electricity and city-gas bill subsidy (JPY 2/kWh electricity, JPY 8/m3 city gas) for July-September 2025 usage, cutting an average household's summer utility bill by roughly JPY 3,000. The remaining JPY 100 billion funds increased subsidies to local governments supporting businesses' electricity and LPG costs and expanded funding support to SMEs via government-backed lenders. METI issued special retail-tariff authorizations to electric and city-gas utilities on 25 June 2025 to implement the July-September discount.

KfW IPEX-Bank, the export- and project-finance arm of German state development bank KfW, announced on 13 May 2025 a EUR 100 million contribution to a EUR 1 billion syndicated financing package (eight banks total) for BEW Berliner Energie und Wärme GmbH, operator of Western Europe's largest district heating system. The facility secures BEW's capital requirements until at least end-March 2027 following its 2024 acquisition by the state of Berlin from Vattenfall, and underwrites the utility's coal phase-out (targeted 2030) and path to climate-neutral district heating generation by 2045. BEW supplies district heating and hot water to roughly 700,000 apartments (over a third of Berlin's housing stock) and 8,000 other buildings.

Shanghai's Development and Reform Commission, Economy and Informatization Commission, and Finance Bureau jointly issued the "Shanghai New-Type Power System Regulation Capacity Incentive Fund Management Measures" (沪发改规范 〔2025〕5号), establishing a five-year per-kilowatt-hour reward scheme for grid-scale energy storage projects that use advanced technology. Independent storage stations meeting technical-advancement and industry-catalysing criteria receive CNY 0.35/kWh (CNY 0.2/kWh for user-side storage), capped at 600 kWh of rewardable output per kW of installed capacity per year for three years, plus a one-time equipment bonus of 40% of the cost premium over conventional lithium-ion storage, capped at CNY 50 million per project. Incentive rates step down 10% annually from 2026-2028. The measure took effect 2025-06-01 and runs for five years.

The UK's state-owned National Wealth Fund (NWF) provided a £600 million loan to ScottishPower (a subsidiary of Spain's Iberdrola) as part of a wider £1.35 billion financing package arranged by Bank of America and a syndicate of commercial banks. The financing accelerates capital deployment for seven of ScottishPower's priority transmission-network upgrade projects, including the Eastern Green Link 1 (EGL1) subsea interconnector and substation/overhead-line reinforcement work at five locations across Scotland. The projects aim to reduce grid congestion, connect more renewable generation, and lower system costs for consumers.

On 30 April 2025, the European Investment Bank (EIB) signed a long-term credit facility of up to EUR 450 million with EWE AG, one of Germany's leading regional energy and infrastructure companies, to finance the renovation, reinforcement and extension of medium- and low-voltage electricity distribution infrastructure in Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen). The facility is the largest EIB loan EWE has received and supports a total investment programme of more than EUR 700 million between 2025 and 2028, covering over 2,600 km of new underground power lines and more than 1,100 new or modernised substations. Global Trade Alert logs the financing as a "red" state-loan intervention on the grounds that EIB funding to a regional grid operator constitutes below-market state-linked support.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin launched the Tamil Nadu Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme (TN-ECMS) on 30 April 2025, making Tamil Nadu the first Indian state to introduce a dedicated state-level electronics components manufacturing subsidy designed to stack on top of the central Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme (ECMS, notified April 2025). The scheme targets ₹30,000 crore (~USD 3.6 bn) in investment and 60,000 jobs over three to five years, supporting 11 high-growth component categories including HDI/MSAP printed circuit boards, lithium-ion cells, display assemblies, camera modules, SMD passive components, multilayer ceramic capacitors, copper-clad laminates, and capital goods for electronics manufacturing. Investment thresholds are ₹50 crore for basic components and up to ₹250 crore for complex sub-assemblies; matching grants mirror the central ECMS subsidy structure with additional state concessions on stamp duty, land, and electricity costs plus workforce-development incentives.

The Inflation Reduction Act (Public Law 117-169), signed by President Biden on 16 August 2022, contains the largest single package of clean-energy and clean-manufacturing subsidies in US history — Congressional Budget Office scored the energy and climate provisions at $369B over 10 years, with subsequent Treasury / academic estimates reaching $800B-$1.2T as uptake exceeded baseline. Core mechanisms include the Section 30D Clean Vehicle credit ($7,500 per qualifying EV), the Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit (per-unit credits for domestically-produced battery cells, modules, electrodes, and critical-mineral processing), the Section 48E Clean Electricity Investment Credit, and the Section 45V Clean Hydrogen Production Credit. Critically, the law contains Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) provisions barring credit eligibility for vehicles or components linked to entities controlled by China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.