Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 26 December 2025, Japan's Cabinet approved the FY2026 (Reiwa 8) initial budget, which allocates a new JPY 415 billion (~USD 2.7bn) line to the "Low-Carbon Hydrogen Hub Development Support Project" (低炭素水素 等拠点整備支援事業), administered by METI's Agency for Natural Resources and Energy (ANRE) through JOGMEC under the Hydrogen Society Promotion Act framework enacted in 2024. The programme subsidises Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) and construction costs for shared transport and storage infrastructure -- tanks, pipelines and receiving-terminal equipment -- built jointly by multiple businesses to move low-carbon hydrogen and its derivatives (ammonia, e-methane, synthetic fuels) from import/production points to industrial users. It sits alongside, but is administratively distinct from, JOGMEC's separately-run "price-gap" (kakakusa) 15-year CfD offtake support for hydrogen suppliers. The budget takes effect with Japan's fiscal year on 1 April 2026, subject to ordinary Diet passage in early 2026.

Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) announced the K-Shipbuilding Strategy for Next-Generation Market Dominance on 15 November 2025 at the emergency economy ministerial meeting and exports-and-investment promotion meeting. The strategy deploys KRW 710 billion (~USD 534 million) by 2028 across three policy directions: (1) technology super-gap via autonomous self-navigating vessels, zero-emission ships (LNG/ammonia/hydrogen tri-fuel), and AI-driven design and smart shipbuilding; (2) manufacturing upgrade through smart shipyard investment, robotics distribution, and improved foreign-manpower visa pathways; and (3) legal infrastructure including a new dedicated "Promotion of Industrialization and Technological Innovation of the Next-Generation Shipbuilding Industry" Act. Korea's overarching target is to capture ≥80% of the next-generation shipbuilding market, explicitly in competition with China's state-subsidised fleet expansion.

DOE's Loan Programs Office closed a USD 1.5 billion loan under the Energy Dominance Financing Program to Wabash Valley Resources, LLC to restart and repurpose a coal-gasification plant (idled since 2016) in West Terre Haute, Indiana, converting it into a coal- and petcoke-fed anhydrous ammonia fertilizer facility with 500,000 metric tons/year capacity. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright framed the loan explicitly as reducing US dependence on foreign fertilizer supply by using domestic coal, positioning the plant to supply cost-competitive nitrogen fertilizer to Corn Belt farmers. Global Trade Alert logs the loan as a state-loan intervention.

The Romanian Government adopted HG 855/2025 on 9 October 2025, approving the National Hydrogen Strategy 2025-2030 with a 2050 perspective and its binding Implementation Action Plan. The strategy sets a production target of 152.9 kt/year of renewable hydrogen by 2030 (interim: 48.7 kt/yr by 2027) and 2,130 MW of electrolyser capacity, with EUR 115 million allocated for a first ~60 MW tranche via PNRR/RRF, Modernisation Fund, and Just Transition Fund pathways. It designates five "hydrogen valleys" co-locating producers with hard-to-abate industrial off-takers (steel, chemicals, fertilisers, heavy transport) and anchors Romania's transposition of EU RED III and alignment with the EU Hydrogen Bank auction architecture.

On 30 September 2025 Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) signed a facility agreement providing up to USD 1.8 billion (JBIC's portion) to Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), co-financed alongside Mizuho Bank (agent) and HSBC's Tokyo branch for a total facility of USD 3 billion. The loan is explicitly structured to support "stable imports of crude oil by Japanese companies" and is the seventh JBIC loan extended to ADNOC for this purpose. A companion MOU signed 4 November 2025 at ADIPEC 2025 broadens the JBIC-ADNOC partnership into downstream energy-transition sectors (hydrogen, ammonia, chemicals).

On 8 July 2025 the European Commission adopted Communication COM(2025) 530 final, the "European Chemicals Industry Action Plan", together with companion staff-working document SWD(2025) 191. The Plan launches a Critical Chemicals Alliance (CCA) of Member States and industry stakeholders to safeguard EU production of strategic base chemicals (ammonia, urea, ethylene, propylene, methanol, chlorine, silicon and other high-volume building blocks) against capacity closures driven by structurally high energy/feedstock costs and third-country oversupply. The package combines (i) accelerated trade-defence on imports of PVC, melamine, glyoxylic acid, ethanolamines and polyols plus extension of the Combined Safeguard Mechanism into chemicals; (ii) energy-cost relief through swift implementation of the Affordable Energy Action Plan and an indirect-CBAM offset for chemicals exposed to high-energy input costs; (iii) a 6th Omnibus simplification package overhauling REACH, CLP labelling, cosmetics and fertilising-product rules with claimed industry savings of at least €363m/year; (iv) a framework for a follow-on Critical Chemicals Act and PFAS restrictions preserving critical applications. The chemicals sector covers ~29,000 EU companies, 1.2m direct jobs, and ~19m dependent supply-chain jobs.

Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) signed a loan agreement on 2025-06-30 for up to approximately USD 626 million (JBIC portion) with Mitsui & Co., Ltd. Co-financed with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, the total co-financing package reaches approximately USD 1,044 million. Proceeds fund Mitsui's investment in Blue Point Number One, LLC, a low-carbon ammonia production facility under construction in Louisiana using CCS technology to cut over 95% of process CO2 emissions. JBIC frames the loan against Japan's Basic Hydrogen Strategy, Seventh Strategic Energy Plan, and GX2040 Vision, which treat hydrogen and its derivatives as key decarbonization energy sources requiring policy-bank-mobilized capital.

The European Commission on 20 May 2025 published the results of the second EU Hydrogen Bank auction (IF24), selecting 15 renewable hydrogen production projects across five European Economic Area countries to share approximately €992 million in Innovation Fund grants. Winning projects span transport, chemicals, methanol, and ammonia end-uses; three projects were selected under a dedicated maritime-fuels lot. Spain, Lithuania, and Austria committed over €700 million in additional national co-funding via the Auctions-as-a-Service mechanism, bringing total public support above €1.69 billion and marking the first large-scale EEA co-funded hydrogen auction.

Hydrom launched Round 3 of Oman's green hydrogen land auction on 30 April 2025, offering a flexible Duqm land block of up to 300 km² with a minimum project footprint of 100 km². A 9-month preparation window runs from the RFQ release (30 April 2025) to proposal submission in early 2026, with project awards to follow. Developers may explore selling surplus renewable electricity to the national grid, and will access the planned 2,000-km hydrogen pipeline and a liquid hydrogen export corridor linking Duqm to the Netherlands and Germany. Round 3 is an implementing-auction instrument within the umbrella 2024 Oman Green Hydrogen Strategy; the two prior rounds have already secured USD 49 bn in investment commitments and more than 1 Mtpa of green hydrogen production capacity by 2030 from more than 30 GW of dedicated renewables.

France updated its 2020 National Low-Carbon Hydrogen Strategy at the Comité interministériel de l'Innovation on 10 April 2025, releasing SNH II under the direction of the Prime Minister and Industry Minister Marc Ferracci. The 2025 actualisation revises capacity targets to 6.5 GW of low-carbon hydrogen production by 2030 and 10 GW by 2035, funded within the France 2030 plan's €9 billion hydrogen envelope (€4 bn for electrolysers, €1.5 bn for end-uses, €2 bn for IPCEI Hy2Tech/Hy2Use French share). A new €4 billion price-support mechanism guarantees low-carbon hydrogen competitiveness against fossil hydrogen for 15 years; the strategy aligns France's "décarboné" taxonomy to include both nuclear-electricity-based and renewable-electricity-based hydrogen, distinct from EU RFNBO additionality rules.

Sultan Haitham bin Tariq issued Royal Decree 38/2025 on 7 April 2025, published in the Sultanate of Oman Official Gazette on 13 April 2025, enacting a unified statutory framework for Oman's special economic zones (SEZs) and free zones (FZs) under the Public Authority for Special Economic Zones and Free Zones (OPAZ). The law consolidates the previously fragmented regimes governing Duqm SEZ, Salalah Free Zone, Sohar Free Zone, Al Mazunah Free Zone, and Knowledge Oasis Muscat into a single overarching statutory architecture, granting a 10-year corporate income tax exemption (renewable for high-value activities), 100% foreign ownership, full capital and profit repatriation, customs-duty exemptions on construction inputs and operational goods, and a statutory one-stop-shop through OPAZ. The law establishes OPAZ as the consolidated regulatory authority with ring-fenced powers over labour, immigration, customs, environment, and land-use within zone boundaries, and creates a new statutory basis for OPAZ to negotiate sector-specific concessions using usufruct, leasehold, and sub-concession instruments. Royal Decree 38/2025 is the principal Vision 2040 FDI-architecture instrument — the parent statute under which the GFCL Salalah LFP battery-materials usufruct, the Hyport Duqm green-ammonia project, and the Karwa Motors EV-assembly arrangement all operate.