Belgium Is Nationalizing Its Nuclear Industry

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THE TOP FIVE

1. Belgium cancels its nuclear phaseout and prepares to nationalize its reactors

A view of the Tihange 2 nuclear reactor, which permanently shut down in 2023. Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Belgium has long ranked as the world’s No. 4 biggest user of nuclear energy as a percentage of its electricity mix, generating nearly half its power from fission. But the country passed a nuclear phaseout law in 2003. Since 2022, when Brussels started to weigh delaying the shutdowns, the European Union’s capital nation has closed five of its seven commercial reactors. The policy divided the government, with liberals fighting to preserve the reactors and Green Party officials, including former Energy Minister Tinne Van der Straeten, who previously worked at a private law firm that counted Russian gas giant Gazprom as one of its biggest clients, pushing for a full atomic exit. Now Belgium is halting the decommissioning of its last two reactors and nationalizing its nuclear plants in a bid to save the industry. In a Thursday post on X, Prime Minister Bart De Wever said his government had reached an agreement with the French utility giant Engie to “initiate the necessary studies for a full takeover” of Belgium’s nuclear industry. Engie owns all seven nuclear plants in the country. “This government chooses safe, affordable, and sustainable energy,” De Wever wrote, “with less dependence on fossil imports and more control over our own supply.”

France, which generates more of its power from fission than any other nation, followed a similar approach, fully nationalizing the utility Électricité de France in 2023 as part of a plan to shore up and expand the reactor fleet. Last month, EDF, as the French giant is known, announced a $117 million investment in a factory to build parts for France’s flagship nuclear reactor, the EPR2. On Wednesday, meanwhile, the Canadian government put out a statement vowing to develop “a transformative” new national nuclear strategy on Wednesday that would focus on the country’s natively-designed CANDU technology and burgeoning uranium mining sector.

2. Exclusive: A creatively-finance, 140-megawatt solar project breaks ground in Texas

America’s solar boom may look slightly dimmer since the Trump administration cracked down on permitting and eliminated key tax credits. But construction has begun on the 140-megawatt Iron Spur Solar project in Snyder, Texas, ensuring that the facility locks in tax credits before the phase-out in July, I can exclusively report for this newsletter. It’s the biggest U.S. project yet funded by Energea, a solar financing startup that allows investors to buy shares in networks of solar farms in the U.S., Brazil, Colombia, and South Africa. Iron Spur is expected to start producing electricity in 2029. Now that the company is looking for offtakers to buy the electricity, co-founder and managing partner Mike Silvestrini said “something has changed.”

“In the past, it was an ass-kissing process of communicating with guys at these big IT companies,” he told me. “It’s turned. All of a sudden, having the power production abilities gives us the upper hand, and we’re able to negotiate from higher ground than we ever have before. It’s a noticeable change. That’s going to continue.” With the tax credit going away, he said, “the cheapest source of new power generation is about to get more expensive. That pretty much guarantees that domestic energy rates go up after July 5, as there are no longer projects with that tax credit available.” In fact, he added, Energea is better off waiting to negotiate a power purchase agreement, offering some insight into how the solar market could change if Republicans don’t manage to pass legislation to salvage the tax credits. “It behooves companies like ours and projects like Iron Spur to be patient and see how markets respond to a now-finite number of investment tax credit projects,” he said.

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3. House Democrats are coming for TotalEnergies’ big Trump deal

As I told you at the start of the week, the Trump administration is replicating the $1 billion deal it made with TotalEnergies to convince the French energy giant to abandon its two offshore wind projects in the U.S. Reporting by Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo later showed that the legal justification for the federal government’s cash offer was shaky at best, and that the actual text of the agreement contained no definite assurances that the company would invest any more than it had already planned to. Now Congress is getting involved. On Wednesday, as Emily reported, two House Democrats sent a letter to Total CEO Patrick Pouyanné announcing that they have opened a formal investigation into the deal. “We’re going to get every document, every email, every last receipt on this deal, and every person who had a hand in this is going to answer for it,” Jared Huffman, the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee from California, said in a press release. “What I have to say to TotalEnergies is this: Consider yourself on notice, we’re coming for you.”

A former official at the Department of the Interior told Utility Dive this week that the deals set a new precedent that could be abused: “You wouldn’t want to create a situation where you are allowing companies, for instance, to buy up leases for anti-competitive purposes and just not do anything on them for a period of time and then give them back and get their money back.” In Virginia, where Dominion Energy just started up its first offshore wind farm, Governor Abigail Spanberger signed legislation this week meant to support training and expansion of the new energy sector’s workforce, per offshoreWIND.biz. Total, for its part, isn’t eschewing renewables everywhere. The company just started construction on a 440-megawatt solar farm in the Philippines, PV Tech reported.

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4. Dozens of countries agree to work on trade measures to cut fossil fuel demand

More than 50 countries have agreed to work on trade measures to cut demand for fossil fuels. The pact came out of the Santa Marta climate summit in Colombia, in what the nonprofit Covering Climate Now called “a game-changing moment.” Climate scientist Johan Rockstrom told delegates at the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels: “You are a light in the tunnel of darkness.” For all the reversals of decarbonization policies we’ve seen over the past two years, however, the world is rapidly looking for alternatives to fossil fuels as the war in Iran drives up prices. “We decided that the transition away from fossil fuels could no longer remain a slogan but must become a concrete political and collective endeavor,” Irene Vélez Torres, environment minister of Colombia, told the Financial Times. Notably, the six-day confab did not include the world’s biggest emitters: China, the U.S., and India, who are responsible for more than 40% of current emissions.

5. Rivian ups the production target for its Georgia factory by 50%

Rivian is set to produce up to 300,000 vehicles at its Georgia factory, up 50% from its initial estimate. The electric automaker announced the news Thursday as part of its first-quarter earnings call. The company said it had reworked a loan deal with the Department of Energy to borrow just $4.5 billion of the original $6.6 billion awarded under the Biden administration, TechCrunch reported. Overall, Rivan’s earnings beat analysts’ expectations, according to Sherwood.

THE KICKER

Genetically modified crops are widely considered to be essential to feeding a growing human population on a planet with a rapidly changing climate. That’s especially true now with the Iran War causing fertilizer shortages at the start of the growing season. Now the EU, long a bastion of GMO policy, is authorizing four more genetically engineered crops for import and use in food and animal feed. The approval, per Fertilizer Daily, is for one new soybean variety and renewed approvals for one maize and two cotton products.