REVANCHISM

Oil Majors Rethink Green Projects Amid Anti-ESG Push

By Alex Kimani - Sep 19, 2025

• The United States has become the global epicenter of the anti-ESG movement, with a significant increase in anti-ESG bills proposed across states since 2021.
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• The re-election of Donald Trump as US President has further accelerated the anti-ESG momentum, leading to rollbacks of climate action policies and executive orders banning ESG investing.
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• Major oil companies are scaling back their clean energy investments and hydrogen ambitions in response to the growing anti-ESG sentiment and evolving policy landscape.

Back in 2021, Texas passed two laws that restricted the state from doing business with companies deemed hostile to the fossil fuels and firearm industries. The Lone Star State barred pensions and other state entities from investing in approximately 350 funds that promote environmental, social and governance, aka ESG investing, claiming that ESG investing does not act in the best financial interests of their clients. 

To wit, the Republican-leaning state banned Wall Street giants Citigroup Inc., BlackRock Inc., Barclays Plc and members of Net Zero Banking Alliance, saying ESG is “…just a hate factory.” The anti-ESG movement has since gained traction, mostly targeting financial services like banks, pension funds and asset managers, as well as the energy sector.

And now a new report by GlobalData reveals how the U.S. has become the epicenter of a rising tide of anti-ESG sentiment across the globe. The report points to a Pleiades Strategy tracker that reveals that a total of 370 anti-ESG bills were submitted to the legislatures of 40 U.S. states between 2021 and 2024. 

GlobalData notes that, whereas few of those bills were signed into law, this does not signify that the anti-ESG movement has weakened. Indeed, an analysis by Ropes & Gray found that anti-ESG bills filed in 2024 enjoyed a significantly higher rate of success than those filed in prior years, indicating that the architects of these bills are becoming more effective at drafting legislative challenges. 

Not surprisingly, the anti-ESG movement has gained massive momentum since the re-election of Donald Trump as U.S. President. 

Trump has rolled back many climate action policies by the previous administration, taken aim at DEI policies and passed executive orders banning ESG investing. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBBA) has rolled back many clean energy credits enacted by former President Joe Biden under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. Whereas OBBBA did not outright cancel the Section 45V clean hydrogen production tax credits as earlier feared, it did accelerate the deadline for projects to begin construction to be eligible for the credit, bringing the deadline forward to December 31, 2027, from January 1, 2033, as originally envisioned in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. 

Trump’s anti-climate actions are similar to his stance in his first term when he unraveled more than 100 climate policies. There are estimates that nearly $28 billion-worth of  wind, solar, EV and battery projects have been delayed or cancelled since Trump took office, with a potential 19,000 jobs chopped.

“Since President Trump’s re-election in November 2024, the efforts of the anti-ESG movement have ratcheted up, and all companies (not just those in the financial services industry) lie within the movement’s scope,” the GlobalData report states. “Trump has unravelled much of the previous administration’s climate action policies, passed executive orders banning ESG investing and taken aim at DEI policies.”

Meanwhile, efforts by the European Union to simplify its regulatory landscape have frequently seen the bloc slide towards anti-ESG, with growing right-wing populism bolstering climate skepticism across the globe. International markets have opposed advancing ESG standards through initiatives like the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and European Green Deal that enforce sustainability criteria by requiring disclosure of ESG-related risks. GlobalData has predicted that the anti-ESG movement will ultimately impact companies across all industries, including institutions and other entities previously considered to be fully independent.

Not surprisingly, Big Oil companies have been scaling back their clean energy investments. Last year, oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM) announced that it will not move forward with one of the world's largest low-carbon hydrogen projects if the federal government failed to provide tax incentives for natural gas-fed facilities. Current guidelines provide incentives for projects that produce "green" hydrogen by using water and renewable energy, but Exxon wants them extended to"blue" hydrogen from gas by trapping carbon emissions. That’s an interesting take because Exxon CEO Darren Woods previously expressed his doubts about the efficacy of carbon capture at lowering emissions because “…the technology works for high concentration streams of gases but is too expensive for low concentration streams.”

BP Inc. (NYSE:BP) has unveiled a less aggressive decarbonization strategy that entails (1) a slower decline in upstream investments and scrapped former plans to shrink refining; (2)  focus more on higher-margin hydrogen and biofuels as well as offshore wind; and (3) higher spending in both oil and gas as well as low-carbon. 

According to the company, the new strategy will offer higher shareholder returns, especially critical to the company after it severed ties with Russia’s Rosneft. BP’s nearly 20% stake in Rosneft helped to add several billion dollars to its bottom line every year. Back in April, BP announced that it was abandoning its hydrogen ambitions in favor of liquefied natural gas (LNG) for transport. Then in July, the European oil major announced that it would exit the $36-billion green hydrogen production facility planned in Australia. BP has informed its Australian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH) partners that it will leave its role as the project’s operator and equity holder.

Shell Plc. (NYSE:SHEL) has revealed it had scrapped plans to build a low-carbon hydrogen plant in Norway citing lack of demand. Days later, Norway’s NOC Equinor ASA (NYSE:EQNR) announced similar plans, "We haven't seen the market for blue hydrogen materialize and decided not to progress the project," a Shell spokesperson told Reuters.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com 

 

Abandoned Coal Operations Could Become Methane Time Bombs

LIKE ABANDONED OIL WELLS

By Felicity Bradstock - Sep 20, 2025

• Researchers in Queensland found a single abandoned coal borehole emitting as much greenhouse gas as 10,000 cars.
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• Methane, 80 times more potent than CO? over 20 years, is leaking from thousands of old coal operations worldwide.
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• Proper decommissioning and plugging of boreholes could deliver rapid emissions reductions and help meet climate targets.

Poorly plugged coal boreholes could be releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, several studies show. Abandoned coal operations worldwide have been found to be a key source of greenhouse gas emissions that could be mitigated through stricter decommissioning regulations and correctly plugging any boreholes found to be leaking methane.

Methane, the gas commonly found leaking from old boreholes, is colourless, odourless and invisible to the naked eye. Yet, it contributes heavily to climate change and is responsible for over 25 percent of the global warming we are seeing today. Methane traps more heat in the atmosphere per molecule than carbon dioxide (CO2), making it 80 times more harmful than CO2 for 20 years after it is released, according to the UNEP. Reducing methane emissions by 45 percent by 2030 could help us meet the Paris Agreement’s target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.

Researchers in Queensland, Australia, have discovered a coal borehole that is releasing as much greenhouse gas as 10,000 cars, leaking dangerous levels of methane into the atmosphere. The emissions readings were taken by University of Queensland Gas and Energy Transition Research Centre researchers at a farm in the Surat Basin in central southern Queensland using a portable Quantum Gas LiDAR system.

The researchers took emissions measurements over a week to see how they varied with temperature and different weather conditions. The researchers also monitored a second coal exploration borehole that was emitting a similar level of methane, forcing groundwater several metres into the air like a geyser.

Associate Professor Phil Hayes said, “This was the first long-term measurement of methane emissions from an abandoned coal exploration borehole. This borehole is one of an estimated 130,000 in Queensland where the quality of sealing by coal explorers is unknown.”

The researchers said that the old borehole looked like normal bare ground in a cattle paddock, but they suspected the site might be relevant when they saw a gas company doing survey work in the area. Although the borehole was not visible from the surface, the researchers’ camera, which explored the 100-metre-deep hole, found it was releasing methane at an annual rate of 19,768 tonnes of CO2, if using a calculation of methane’s impact over 20 years, the equivalent of 10,000 cars each driving 12,000 kilometres a year.

This is worrying given that there are thousands of abandoned coal boreholes across the country, and there is little information on how old operations were sealed and their current state. This specific borehole had been at the site for around two decades, although it is not clear how long it had been leaking for. “While the majority of these boreholes won’t be emitters, our measurements show they could be a major source of greenhouse gas emissions that is currently unreported,” the University of Queensland’s Sebastian Hoerning said.

The findings indicate that Queensland may be able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by ensuring that its abandoned coal activities are properly decommissioned and plugged. Sealing the highest-emitting boreholes could rapidly reduce emissions in the region. The researchers hope to expand their study to assess more coal boreholes and water bore emissions across Queensland.

Many boreholes were poorly sealed by energy companies due to cost and a lack of strict regulations. The Queensland researchers found that some were found to have a bag of cement sealing the whole before being covered with soil, which is not sufficient to stop emissions from leaking. Hayes said, “These boreholes are drilled by coal exploration companies. They can be done in one day, and they tell the company about the quality of the coal or how it changes from one area to the next.”

Researchers believe this could be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to old fossil fuel operations leaking dangerous greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. For example, in the United States, roughly 4.5 million oil and gas wells have been drilled across the country since the 1850s, and around 3.5 million of these wells have been abandoned. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that non-producing oil and gas wells emitted as much as 275,000 metric tons of methane in 2020, equivalent to the emissions produced by around 1.7 million gasoline vehicles.

Thousands of oil, gas, and coal companies have managed the decommissioning of activities worldwide over several decades, making for a highly fragmented shutdown process, likely leaving a huge quantity of improperly plugged boreholes and oil wells in its wake. While exploring old oil and coal regions could be costly, it could help significantly decarbonise and reduce air pollution in certain regions of the world.

In Australia, the government must now consider conducting retroactive mapping of coal regions alongside exploration companies to understand just how many boreholes were improperly plugged to plug them properly. This could be a fast hit to help reduce methane emissions in the region in line with government aims to tackle climate change.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

 

Japan Joins Denmark in Pioneering Osmotic Energy Revolution

By Haley Zaremba - Sep 20, 2025

• Japan inaugurated its first commercial osmotic power plant in Fukuoka, producing 880,000 kWh annually by leveraging desalination brine.
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• Osmotic energy, recently named a top emerging technology by the World Economic Forum, offers constant, carbon-free baseload power.
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• With the potential to meet nearly 20% of global electricity demand, osmotic energy is gaining traction despite efficiency challenges.
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Japan just became the second country in the world to launch a commercial-scale osmotic energy plant, a big win for the little-known form of clean energy generation that first broke ground in Denmark. While osmotic energy is nascent and its testing grounds remain limited, it has big potential – The World Economic Forum recently named osmotic power systems as one of the top 10 emerging technologies to watch in 2025.

This form of carbon-free energy generation uses osmosis between freshwater and saltwater to create power. In other words, it works by moving water from a less concentrated solution to a more concentrated one across a semipermeable membrane. “When freshwater and seawater meet, a natural gradient in salinity is created, prompting ions to migrate from the saltier side to the less salty side in pursuit of equilibrium,” an Earth.org article explains in layman’s terms. “The movement of water and ions generates a pressure differential that can be harnessed to produce electricity.”

The result is a baseload form of totally clean and carbon-free energy production that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This is critical for energy security, as the majority of clean energy capacity, namely wind and solar, is variable. This means that osmotic energy could be an excellent alternative clean power from an energy security perspective. 

Denmark brought the world’s first commercial-scale osmotic power plant online in 2023. This month, Japan followed suit with a brand new plant in Fukuoka. The plant began operations on August 5, and will produce 880,000 kilowatt-hours a year. The plant was developed in tandem with a local desalination plant. The use of extra-salinated water leftover from the desalination process lends itself perfectly to the osmosis model by increasing efficiency while also reducing waste. “Those stronger gradients boost efficiency and grounds osmotic generation in existing systems rather than the lab,” reports New Atlas.

“I feel overwhelmed that we have been able to put this into practical use. I hope it spreads not just in Japan, but across the world,” Akihiko Tanioka, professor emeritus at the Institute of Science Tokyo, told Kyodo News.

Pilot-scale osmotic energy models have already been developed in other nations around the world including Norway, France, and South Korea. Other coastal nations will likely soon follow suit as Denmark and Japan demonstrate the utility of their own plants. Proponents believe that the benefits of the nascent sector will speak for themselves. 

“Osmotic power is clean, completely natural, available 24 hours a day in all coastal areas, can be turned on almost instantly and modulated very easily,” Nicolas Heuzé, co-founder of osmotic energy firm Sweetch Energy, told the World Economic Forum.

If and when osmotic energy takes off, its productive potential would be enormous. Almost 30,000 TWh of osmotic energy is naturally released by deltas and estuaries each and every year – it just needs to be harnessed. The Dubai Future Foundation calculates that osmotic systems could eventually produce approximately 5,177 terawatt-hours (TWh) annually – that’s almost a fifth of global electricity needs. 

However, scaling the technology can be difficult due to low energy efficiency. While the Japanese plant gets a relatively high energy output thanks to the concentrated brine it sources from its associated desalination plant, models elsewhere can’t necessarily expect the same level of performance. But in places where the technology makes sense, the potential is significant. 

“Globally, and particularly in salt-rich areas like Australia and the Middle East, where access to brackish or seawater exceeds access to freshwater, these power systems hold huge potential for baseload energy and clean water production,” Dr. Katherine Daniell, Director of the Australian National University’s School of Cybernetics, was quoted by the World Economic Forum.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

Natural Gas is America’s Secret Weapon in the AI Power Race

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Sep 20, 2025

• Natural gas producers and pipeline operators anticipate accelerated approval and development of gas infrastructure to address rising electricity demand and consumer bills in the era of AI.
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• Despite record energy production, U.S. electricity prices have increased faster than inflation, prompting industry leaders to advocate for more gas connections to data centers and manufacturing.
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• Analysts and investment firms like Goldman Sachs see natural gas as uniquely positioned to meet the projected 2.4% annual increase in U.S. electricity consumption through 2030, with AI-related demand accounting for two-thirds of this growth.
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Top natural gas producers and pipeline operators expect the industry and various U.S. states to accelerate approval and development of natural gas infrastructure in the new normal American electricity market of rising demand and consumer bills.  

American ratepayers have seen electricity prices rising at a faster pace than U.S. inflation over the past three years. These increases are set to outpace the rate of inflation through 2026, the Energy Information Administration says. 

At the same time, the United States has never produced more energy than now, with a record amount in 2024 and rising output of oil and natural gas in 2025, too. 

The abundance of energy could help lower electric utility bills for consumers—if there is enough gas linked to powering data centers and manufacturing, the primary growth drivers of U.S. power demand. 

Eventually, the spiking energy costs will lead to the various U.S. states approving additional gas infrastructure, EQT Corp, one of America’s top natural gas producers, reckons. 

“We’ve never produced more energy than we’re producing now, but Americans’ energy bills are up over 35%,” EQT’s chief executive Toby Rice said during BloombergNEF’s ‘Barrel of Tomorrow in the Age of AI’ summit in Houston this week. 

“That’s the catalyst that’s going to get people asking questions,” the executive added. 

His opinion that additional infrastructure, most of all gas, will help bring down elevated consumer energy bills was shared by Cynthia Hansen, Executive Vice President & President, Gas Transmission & Midstream at pipeline giant Enbridge, and Chris James, founder and chief investment officer at Engine No.1, an investment firm. 

Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Louisiana – key gas-producing states thanks to the shale regions the Permian, Appalachia, and Haynesville – could be frontrunners in the race to add more gas infrastructure, Enbridge’s Hansen said. Big Tech is scouting for sites in these states amid rising interest to build data centers there to take advantage of the nearby gas supply and friendlier regulatory environment, Hansen said at the BNEF summit. 

So far this decade, gas infrastructure development has been shunned due to opposition by U.S. states to host more pipelines and the Biden Administration’s pivot to supporting renewable energy and telling oil and gas companies they are things of the past. 

But with the Trump Administration strongly backing American energy dominance, increased oil and gas production, and eased regulatory burdens for project approvals, new infrastructure – pipeline and power plants – could come online to help meet rising electricity demand.  

Analysts are also betting on natural gas to help feed America’s AI boom. 

Onshoring of manufacturing activity and AI-related data centers are driving an increase in U.S. electricity consumption, Goldman Sachs said in a report earlier this year.

U.S. electrical power demand is expected to rise by 2.4% each year through 2030, with AI-related demand accounting for about two-thirds of the incremental power demand in the country, the investment bank said.

More than $700 billion of grid investment is expected in the country through 2030, as the U.S. infrastructure needs to be updated to accommodate the unprecedented growth of electricity demand, according to Goldman Sachs.

Natural gas is best positioned to capture most of the growth, according to the investment bank.

“Natural gas will benefit significantly from the rising electricity demand and the requirement for 24/7 uninterrupted supply. It is most flexible among all energy sources and an abundant domestic resource,” Goldman Sachs said. 

The world’s biggest economy will need all energy sources to ensure power demand is met. Natural gas is the biggest near-term winner of AI advancements, but renewables will also play a key role in powering the data centers of next-generation computing, analysts say.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com 

AI Powers a New Wave in Tidal Energy Development

By Haley Zaremba - Sep 21, 2025

• The increasing energy consumption of artificial intelligence is driving new research and investment into clean energy sources, particularly tidal energy.
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• Tidal energy offers a constant and reliable power supply, unlike intermittent sources like solar and wind, making it ideal for powering AI.
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• AI is also being leveraged to improve tidal energy technologies, with projects like ELEMENT aiming to reduce development costs and optimize operations.
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As our global energy needs continue to soar higher, catalyzed by sweeping integration of artificial intelligence models, more and more investors are taking an all-of-the-above approach to energy generation. AI’s growing energy needs are leading to increased natural gas and coal production and delayed closures of fossil fuel plants. But, on the other hand, the tech sector’s ballooning energy footprint is also incentivizing a new wave of research and development into niche and nascent forms of clean energy production like enhanced geothermal technologies, nuclear fusion, and tidal energy.

Sources like geothermal and tidal energy hold great potential for reliably and cleanly powering AI because they provide a constant stream of energy, unlike solar and wind, which wax and wane according to climatic factors. For this reason, proponents of tidal energy (also known as wave energy) think that the sector is finally about to take off in a big way.

“Wave energy is the most stable and the least intermittent source of renewable energy. In suitable locations, it can actually produce 24/7,” says Inna Braverman, founder and CEO of a Stockholm-based tidal energy startup called Eco Wave. “It can be a stabilizing factor for solar and for wind because solar is great, but you have the night, you have cloud coverage and you don't produce anything. The wind blows for a few hours, but when the wind finishes blowing, the turbine doesn't work anymore.”

Eco Wave has just kicked off the very first wave-based electric power project in the United States. The floating platform is gathering energy in the Port of Los Angeles, where the water’s natural movements push floating platforms up and down. The movement of the platforms pump a hydraulic cylinder, which in turn spins a turbine to generate clean electricity.

According to a report by Forbes, Braverman has ambitious goals for expanding on the pilot project, which includes a plan to “eventually construct a 60-megawatt commercial-scale version along an 8-mile breakwater in the harbor that could supply enough electricity to power 60,000 homes.” The LA pilot project is just one of a growing number of wave-energy models around the world, including in Taiwan, Australia, and Portugal. 

“With such vast potential, wave energy could play a huge role in powering the AI boom,” Forbes reported earlier this year. “Constructing [data centers] near coastal areas would allow them to tap directly into the ocean’s abundant clean energy, creating an efficient solution for growing demand.”

The potential energy generating power of tidal energy in the United States and around the globe is mind-bogglingly large. A 2023 report from the United States Energy Information Administration calculates that “the theoretical annual energy potential of waves off the coasts of the United States was estimated to be as much as 2.64 trillion kilowatthours, which is equal to about 63% of total U.S. utility-scale electricity generation.” The coasts of Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand also offer huge potential for tidal energy. In Europe, the potential of wave power production is estimated to be 2,800 TWh per year, roughly 107.6% of the global nuclear power production as of 2023.

At the same time, AI is also being used to improve emergent tidal technologies. Large language models could very well transform not only how much energy we produce, but the way we produce it. A European Union project called ELEMENT is currently working on AI integration into tidal turbines for more optimal and efficient operations. This could help lower the cost of tidal energy development, which is essential to allow the nascent form of energy production to get a toehold in the highly competitive global energy market. ELEMENT claims that it will use behavioral modelling and AI to reduce the costs of tidal energy by a game-changing 17 percent margin.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com 

 

The Race to Reinvent U.S. Nuclear Power

By Haley Zaremba - Sep 21, 2025

• America’s aging nuclear fleet faces retirement, but new technologies like small modular reactors (SMRs) and 3D printing offer a path to cheaper, faster builds.
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• Plant Vogtle’s $35 billion delays highlight past pitfalls, yet startups and labs are reimagining nuclear construction with advanced materials and AI.
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• With rare bipartisan backing and international deals, the U.S. aims to triple nuclear capacity as part of its climate and energy security goals.
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The United States is the single-largest producer of nuclear power in the world, accounting for approximately a third of global output. But the domestic nuclear sector is in severe decline, and the nuclear fleet is rapidly aging, with many of the nation’s reactors scheduled to be retired in the coming years. Reviving the sector could be a huge boon to national energy security and global climate goals, but building new plants is prohibitively expensive. 

In the past few decades, the United States has only built one new nuclear power plant, Waynesboro, Georgia’s Plant Vogtle. Vogtle has the distinction of being the most expensive infrastructure project of any kind in U.S. history, clocking in at a whopping $35 billion after years of delays. First approved in 2009, the last reactor finally came online in April of last year. 

The project is considered by most to be a bloated disaster, with the potential to derail momentum toward a nuclear renaissance in the United States. “But there are two ways to interpret the cautionary tale presented by Vogtle,” Oilprice reported as the project was wrapping up last year. “ Either you think that the lesson is not to build new reactors, or that the lesson is to build nuclear reactors better.”

A number of labs and startups across the United States have opted for the latter. Scientists and engineers are hard at work trying to figure out how to build nuclear reactors better and more cheaply than ever before. 

One of the biggest focuses of nuclear innovation is the development of small modular reactors (SMRs) which will make nuclear power more scalable and streamlined, lowering up-front development costs. These smaller reactors can be mass-produced offsite in a factory setting and then assembled onsite, avoiding the extremely costly design and permitting process of traditional nuclear plants. Already, two SMR models have been approved for rollout in the United States, and many more are in the pipeline. 

Meanwhile, Oak Ridge National Laboratory is working on integrating cutting-edge technologies into nuclear plant design for more efficient and effective designs and processes, including 3-D printing and artificial intelligence. The Tennessee-based National Laboratory says it has “successfully developed and validated large-scale, 3D-printed polymer composite forms for casting complex, high-precision concrete structures that would be technically challenging and costly to produce using conventional methods.”

The use of these 3-D printed composite forms can considerably cut down on production times. Typically, the casting of “complex structural components with unique geometries” can take weeks, but with these molds, nuclear projects can cast the parts on-site in a matter of days and with greater precision. The design of the 3-D molds has been tested and validated as part of the construction process for the Hermes Low-Power Demonstration Reactor at Kairos Power’s Oak Ridge campus.

“At ORNL, we’re showing that the future of nuclear construction doesn’t have to look like the past,” says Ryan Dehoff, director of the lab’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility. “We’re combining national lab capabilities with MDF’s legacy of taking big, ambitious swings — moonshots that turn bold ideas into practical solutions — to accelerate new commercial nuclear energy.”

The timing is right – nuclear is a rare bipartisan priority in the United States and the current policy climate is bullish on a homegrown nuclear revival. At COP28, during the Biden administration, the United States was one of more than 20 countries that cooperated to launch the Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy. And so far, anomalously, the Trump administration has shown no signs of walking back that pledge. Just this week, Donald Trump signed a flurry of nuclear deals with the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, amounting to multiple billions of dollars to expand nuclear energy power production capacity across both nations.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

The U.K. and U.S. Have Big Plans for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

By Felicity Bradstock - Sep 20, 2025

• U.S. President Donald Trump and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer are expected to sign the Atlantic Partnership for Advanced Nuclear Energy, focusing on SMR development and deployment.
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• The agreement will streamline licensing, accelerate advanced reactor projects, and attract billions in private-sector investment across both countries.
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• Major U.K. projects—such as Rolls-Royce SMRs, X-Energy/Centrica reactors, and EDF’s nuclear data hub—are set to align with the transatlantic pact.

As U.S. President Donald Trump and U.K. Prime Minister Kier Starmer meet on the president’s second official visit to Britain this term, nuclear power is one of the energy topics expected to be addressed. Both countries are pursuing a new era of nuclear power, after several decades of stagnation, investing in research and development into innovative new nuclear technologies, such as small modular reactors (SMR). Following the meeting, greater collaboration is expected in SMR development to accelerate the commercial rollout of smaller-scale nuclear projects in both countries.

SMRs are advanced nuclear reactors with a power capacity of around 300 MW(e) per unit, equivalent to around one-third the generating capacity of traditional nuclear reactors. SMRs are much smaller than conventional reactors and are modular, making it simpler for them to be assembled in factories and transported to site. Thanks to their smaller size, SMRs can be developed on sites that are not suitable for bigger reactors. They are also significantly cheaper and faster to build than conventional nuclear reactors, as they can be constructed incrementally to meet the growing energy demand of a site.

In July, when meeting with President Trump on his golf course in Scotland, British Prime Minister Starmer said the U.K. would benefit from working more closely with the United States on SMR technology. “The more we can work together on this, the better,” Starmer said. Trump responded by saying his government would explore the opportunity for smaller nuclear plants. “We're doing smaller and bigger, but the small is interesting,” he told reporters at the time. Trump appeared interested in the lower costs associated with SMR development compared to those of conventional nuclear plants.

During his second official state visit to the U.K., Trump is expected to sign a sweeping nuclear power agreement with Starmer, known as the Atlantic Partnership for Advanced Nuclear Energy, to accelerate the development of the clean energy source. The deal focuses on streamlining licensing and regulatory approvals, accelerating the deployment of advanced reactors, and unlocking billions in private-sector investment across both the U.S. and the U.K.

Several other U.K. nuclear power projects have also been announced that are expected to align with the new partnership. These include the X-Energy and Centrica plan to build up to 12 advanced modular reactors in Hartlepool, northeast England, to power 1.5 million homes; Holtec International, EDF, and Tritax’s plan to repurpose the former Cottam coal-fired plant in Nottinghamshire into a nuclear-powered data centre hub using SMR technology; Rolls-Royce’s anticipated entrance into the U.S. SMR market; Urenco’s supply of an advanced type of low-enriched uranium to the U.S. market; and Last Energy and DP World’s backing for micro modular reactor development at the London Gateway port.

Plans for the two powers to fast-track safety checks align with recent moves by President Trump to accelerate the deployment of nuclear power in the U.S., aiming to deploy 300 GW of net new nuclear capacity by 2050 to quadruple domestic nuclear power. In May, Trump signed three executive orders to support these aims: Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Deployment of Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security; and Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy. However, there are fears that Trump may weaken the powers or even scrap the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which assesses projects for health and safety and ensures reactors operate securely, as part of his acceleration plans.

In the U.K., in June, the government chose Rolls-Royce SMR as the preferred bidder to partner with Great British Energy (GBN) – Nuclear to develop SMRs, subject to final government approvals. The government plans to invest $3.4 billion for the overall small modular reactor programme to power 3 million homes and support around 3,000 new jobs.

In January, the chair of the board of the Rolls-Royce-led consortium developing SMRs, Stephen Lovegrove, said that Rolls-Royce was around 18 months ahead of the competition in developing SMR technology. GBN was originally expected to approve the development of its first SMR by 2029 before it changed the deadline to 2031 and then to 2032 or 2033. Rolls-Royce said at the time the delays had held them back, but it hoped to develop its first 470-MW SMR in the U.K. before expanding to other markets. 

Despite heavy investment in recent years, many companies continue to struggle to get SMR technology off the ground due to a range of constraints, such as strict nuclear power regulations and limited access to the enriched uranium needed to power the reactors. According to the Nuclear Energy Agency, 74 SMR designs are currently being developed worldwide, supported by around $15 billion in public and private funding, with 51 in the pre-licensing or licensing period with nuclear safety regulators in 15 countries. However, only two commercial SMRs are currently operational worldwide. While several more SMRs are expected to become operational over the next decade, progress remains slow, although a deal between the U.K. and U.S. could signal a new wave of SMR development.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com