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

Brazil's federal innovation-financing agency FINEP (Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos), under the MCTI/FNDCT umbrella, published a BRL 500 million (~USD 94.8 million) public call — "Finep Mais Inovação Brasil – Rodada 2 – Transição Energética" — offering non-repayable economic-subsidy grants for private-sector research, development and innovation projects across eight energy-transition technology lines: low-carbon electricity generation, energy storage, low-carbon hydrogen, biofuels, biogas/biomethane, and carbon capture/storage/use. Applicant companies must partner with at least one Scientific, Technological and Innovation Institution (ICT). Proposal submission opened 2026-03-03 and runs continuously until 2026-08-31 17:00 (Brasília time).

Brazil's national development bank BNDES approved BRL 950 million (~USD 176 million) in financing on 12 January 2026 for Inpasa Agroindustrial S/A to build its sixth Brazilian biorefinery, in Luís Eduardo Magalhães, western Bahia. The package blends BRL 350 million from Fundo Clima (concessional climate fund) with BRL 600 million from the BNDES Finem line, which Global Trade Alert flags for local-content incentives. The plant will process up to 1 million tonnes of corn, sorghum and other grains a year, producing an estimated 498 million litres of ethanol, 248,900 tonnes of DDGS and 185 GWh of electricity, reaching full capacity from 2027.

Brazil's national development bank BNDES approved a BRL 384.3 million (~USD 70.2 million) loan under its "BNDES Mais Inovação" innovation credit line to FS Indústria de Biocombustíveis Ltda. (FS Bioenergia), financing the country's first Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) unit at its corn-ethanol plant in Lucas do Rio Verde, Mato Grosso. The facility will compress, inject, and permanently store CO2 in the saline sedimentary reservoirs of the Parecis Basin, targeting removal of ~423,000 tonnes of CO2 per year — effectively eliminating the plant's process emissions. The loan is state-directed concessional financing for a single named domestic producer and forms part of BNDES's broader decarbonisation and carbon-market financing push aligned with the Lula government's energy-transition agenda.

Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Japan's state export-credit and outbound-investment finance institution, signed a credit line agreement on 2025-11-12 providing USD 360 million of a USD 600 million total facility to Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. (Petrobras), Brazil's state-controlled oil company. The credit line, extended under JBIC's GREEN Operations framework, is earmarked to fund decarbonization, energy-transition, and environmental projects implemented by Petrobras or its subsidiaries in Brazil, including alignment with the Initiative for Sustainable Fuel and Mobility (ISFM), a Japan-Brazil biofuels/mobility-technology programme, and Brazil's 2050 net-zero target. The agreement was signed during COP30 in Belém, Brazil.

Brazil's national development bank BNDES approved BRL 300 million (~USD 55.7 million) in financing on 27 October 2025 for Neomille S.A. (CerradinhoBio group) to expand its corn-processing plant in Chapadão do Céu, Goiás. The package draws on two lines — BRL 240 million from Fundo Clima (climate fund, below-market rate) and BRL 60 million from BNDES Finem Incentivada — and will lift the plant's corn-ethanol capacity to up to 527,000 m3 per harvest, DDGS output to 265,000 tonnes, and corn-oil output to 21,000 tonnes, while creating 91 permanent jobs. Global Trade Alert classifies the BNDES Finem Incentivada leg as a "certainly harmful" local-content-incentive intervention.

Brazil's national development bank BNDES approved R$625 million in financing on 11 August 2025 for São Martinho S/A to build a second processing line at its Boa Vista corn-ethanol complex in Quirinópolis, Goiás, blending R$500 million from the concessional Fundo Clima with R$125 million from the standard BNDES Finem line. FINEP (Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos) is contributing a further R$102.8 million earmarked for the project's innovative components — Industry 4.0 process technology and a first-in-Brazil vinasse oil-recovery process. Combined, the two public financiers cover R$727.8 million (~62%) of the R$1.18 billion total project cost, with São Martinho funding the remaining R$452.2 million from its own resources. The expansion adds 635,000 tonnes/year of corn-milling capacity and 270,000 m³/year of ethanol output, targeted for 2027 start-up.

On 24 July 2025 the European Investment Bank (EIB) and Italian energy major Eni signed a EUR 500 million (approx. USD 587.8 million) 15-year finance contract to support conversion of Eni's Livorno refinery in Tuscany into a biorefinery. The project adds a biogenic pre-treatment unit and a 500,000-tonne/year Ecofining(TM) plant able to produce HVO diesel, HVO naphtha and bio-LPG from waste and plant-residue feedstocks, with future flexibility to shift output toward sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). It is Eni's third domestic biorefinery conversion (after Venice and Gela) and part of Enilive's plan to reach 5+ million tonnes/year of biorefinery capacity by 2030. Global Trade Alert logged the financing as a "Red" (trade/investment-distorting) state loan.

The European Commission adopted Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1206 on 19 June 2025, suspending GSP+ tariff preferences on non-fuel ethanol (CN codes 2207 10 and 2207 20, excluding TARIC-coded fuel-use ethanol) imported from Pakistan, effective 21 June 2025 for two years. The measure invokes the safeguard clause (Article 30 of Regulation (EU) No 978/2012) after finding that a surge in duty-free Pakistani ethanol — 27% of all EU non-fuel ethanol imports in 2024 (roughly 215,929 tonnes), priced around 25% below EU producer prices — caused serious injury to the EU bioethanol industry. Reinstated Common Customs Tariff duties are approximately EUR 243/tonne (CN 2207 10) and EUR 129/tonne (CN 2207 20).

The European Commission published Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/261 in the Official Journal on 10 February 2025, imposing definitive anti-dumping duties on imports of biodiesel (fatty-acid mono-alkyl esters / FAME and paraffinic gasoils from synthesis or hydro-treatment of non-fossil origin / HVO) originating in China. Duties range from 10.0% (EcoCeres, an individually-examined producer) to 21.7%–35.6% for other exporters, applied on top of the MFN import duty, covering an estimated €1.4 billion of annual EU-bound Chinese biodiesel flows. The regulation supersedes provisional duties imposed under CR (EU) 2024/2163 and explicitly excludes Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) from the AD scope while introducing mandatory SAF import-registration tracking.