BRUSSELS — The European Union should loosen its “rigid” adherence to climate neutrality and allow itself to miss its 2050 net-zero goal by up to 10 percent, Germany’s minister for energy and economy told a major oil and gas conference in the United States. Speaking at the annual CERAWeek conference in Texas late Monday, Katherina Reiche called the EU’s goal to slash its planet-warming pollution to net zero by mid-century into question. Europe, for a long time, “had left a corridor, there wasn’t a net-zero … it was, for Europe, a goal [to reduce emissions] between 85 and 95 percent,” she claimed, likely referring to a non-binding European Commission roadmap from 2011. “There is a flexibility we have to get back, accept not 100 percent solutions but allowing different solutions and technologies and accept that there might be a gap of maybe a 5 or 10 percent by 2050,” she added. “If you have strict and rigid goals, you bind yourself, it ends up that you lose industries that you need … and we can’t afford that we lose our energy-intensive industries in Europe and in Germany.” Reiche’s comments mark a rare departure from the EU consensus. The bloc set itself a net-zero by 2050 goal in 2019, with only Poland not formally committing to the new milestone. Last year, EU governments agreed on an intermediate target to slash the bloc’s emissions by up to 90 percent by 2040. Germany has set itself even stricter goals, aiming to become climate neutral by 2045. Throughout her remarks at CERAWeek, Reiche stressed that economic growth must come before green targets. “At the end of the day, it is good to have a goal of sustainability — but if sustainability crashes your economy, you have to readjust,” she said. “And that’s what we’re doing right now.” In Germany, Reiche has in recent months unveiled plans to build out gas power plants, scrap the previous government’s gas boiler phaseout, remove subsidies for rooftop solar panels, and deprioritize the connection of renewables from the country’s power grid. She also told the Texas audience that Germany should drill for fossil fuels in the North Sea, saying: “We have a gas field in the North Sea, which we don’t want to explore. I think we can’t stick to this attitude. We have to also go into our own reserves.” And she insisted: “I am not speaking against sustainability, and not against a climate target. But if a climate target ignores other things you have to think of, especially affordability and abundance … you have to change course.” Mike Lee contributed to this report from Texas.

HOUSTON — The Trump administration reached a nearly $1 billion agreement with French energy giant TotalEnergies on Monday to cancel its offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York and North Carolina. The announcement marks the latest blow by the Trump administration against the U.S. offshore wind industry, particularly in the Northeast, after it faced a series of recent legal losses. “The era of taxpayers subsidizing unreliable, unaffordable and unsecured energy is officially over,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told reporters at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. As part of the agreement, the Interior Department would terminate the leases for TotalEnergies’ Attentive Energy and Carolina Long Bay projects, worth $928 million, the department said. The lease sales occurred during the Biden administration. TotalEnergies committed to invest the value of those leases into oil and natural gas production in the United States, after which the United States will reimburse the company dollar-for-dollar for the amount they paid for the offshore wind leases, the department said. The company is poised to redirect the funds toward the Rio Grande LNG plant in Texas and the development of upstream conventional oil in the Gulf of Mexico and of shale gas production, according to the Interior Department. Burgum and TotalEnergies signed the agreements Monday from the conference. President Donald Trump has often attacked the U.S. offshore wind sector as unreliable and expensive. He’s repeatedly said he plans to have “no windmills built in the United States” under his tenure. Still, the settlement would suggest a new tack by the administration to target the sector. The Trump administration previously issued stop-work orders for offshore wind projects currently under construction on the East Coast, but judges lifted all five orders earlier this year. “Considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest, we have decided to renounce offshore wind development in the United States, in exchange for the reimbursement of the lease fees,” TotalEnergies Chair and CEO Patrick Pouyanné said in a statement. Pouyanné previously said the company would halt development of the Attentive Energy project, off the New Jersey and New York coasts, following Trump’s return to the White House. Both the Attentive Energy and Carolina Long Bay projects were in the early stages of development. Pouyanné told reporters that the company continues to invest in solar, onshore wind and batteries. The deal is a major blow for New York’s offshore wind targets, although proposed projects in the lease area controlled by TotalEnergies and its partners never secured final contracts with the state. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) called the prospect of a deal “not helpful” last week. Attentive Energy dropped out of a bidding process for deals with New York in October 2024, even before Trump’s election. The state concluded that process last month with no awards amid the federal uncertainty and officials have struggled to determine next steps for the industry writ large. Hochul has pivoted to an “all of the above” energy strategy in the face of Trump’s opposition to offshore wind — including nuclear and fossil fuels. Further delays to the development of the technology off New York’s coast will likely further the state’s reliance on repowering fossil fuel plants to serve the New York City region. The deal also leaves New Jersey without any workable offshore wind projects at a time when Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill is already searching for more clean energy to combat a regional power crunch. The project was supposed to provide more than 1,300 megawatts of power. Sherrill’s predecessor, Phil Murphy, had lofty ambitions for the industry that were all for naught. His administration approved a series of offshore wind projects that all ran into financial or permitting challenges. The state approved Attentive Energy’s project in early 2024 as part of an attempted reset of the industry, which was already facing woe. The new affront could also prove problematic to permitting reform discussions on the Hill, as Democratic lawmakers have linked progress on those negotiations to whether or not the administration continues its attacks on renewable energy. ClearView Energy Partners said in a note last week the deal could also “re-raise concerns about the durability of federal approvals and therefore further erode, but not eliminate, the thin opportunity for bipartisan permitting reform on Capitol Hill.” So far, Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) is staying the course on permitting talks, despite reports of the settlement agreement last week — a development he derided as “just more selling out the public for the fossil fuel industry.” His office did not immediately provide further comment Monday. Some Moderate New York Republicans last week also criticized the reported settlement. Marie French and Ry Rivard contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission will make a proposal to boost the bloc’s carbon market reserve within “days” and develop a €30 billion decarbonization fund, in response to pressure from EU leaders to limit the CO2 price’s impact on electricity bills. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU executive would work on a mix of immediate relief and structural changes to bring down high energy prices, with measures to tackle all components of the power bill, from taxes and levies to carbon costs. Two measures to tweak the Emissions Trading System (ETS), which requires factories and power plants to purchase a permit for every ton of CO2 they emit, “will come in the next days,” von der Leyen said at a press conference following Thursday’s EU leaders’ summit. They include an update to the so-called benchmarks that determine how many free-of-charge permits a certain industrial sector receives and a proposal to “increase the firepower” of the Market Stability Reserve governing the ETS permit supply. In what she described as the “medium term,” von der Leyen pointed to the review of the ETS scheduled for this summer, as well as a new “ETS investment booster” providing financial support to industry. This booster, first reported by POLITICO on Thursday, will “have a budget of round about €30 billion, financed by 400 million ETS allowances,” she said. “The aim is to finance projects for decarbonization” under a first-come, first-served scheme with a focus on lower-income EU countries. In their summit conclusions, leaders asked the Commission to conduct the ETS review “by July 2026 at the latest, to reduce the volatility of the carbon price and mitigate its impact on electricity prices … while preserving the essential role of the ETS.” Compared to previous drafts, the final conclusions also “invited” the Commission “to work closely with Member States to design national temporary and targeted measures” to rein in high energy prices. This addition was seen as catering to countries such as Italy and Poland, which had cited their national circumstances — in particular, high reliance on fossil fuels in their power mix — as reasons for more substantial changes to the ETS, two diplomats said. Asked specifically about a controversial Italian decree subsidizing power companies to make up for their ETS costs, von der Leyen said: “Because of different energy mix in different member states you cannot have one-size-fits-all” and vowed to “work closely with the Italian government on the Italian decree.” In general, she said, Thursday’s summit was “positive for the ETS.” The bloc’s bedrock climate measure escaped demands for fundamental changes from leaders and was widely praised as a key lever for accelerating the bloc’s transition to cheaper clean energy.

BRUSSELS — The EU’s top diplomat warned leaders at a summit on Thursday that the bloc could easily become entangled in a toxic conflict in the Middle East that could be difficult to extricate itself from. High Representative Kaja Kallas used a speech at a European Council in Brussels to caution against joining an open-ended war against Iran led by the U.S. and Israel. “Starting war is like a love affair — it’s easy to get in and difficult to get out,” she said, according to two diplomats briefed by leaders on the closed-door talks, which are only attended by presidents and prime ministers. At the same time, Kallas reiterated the importance of the EU’s defending its interests in the region but said there was little appetite for expanding the remit of its Aspides naval mission, currently operating in the Red Sea. U.S. President Donald Trump has called on allies — including European nations such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom — to help escort civilian vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. Oil and gas prices have spiked in recent days after Tehran closed the strategic waterway to shipping, stranding oil and gas tankers serving fossil fuel-exporting nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. “I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Strait?’ That would get some of our non-responsive ‘Allies’ in gear, and fast!!!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. Kallas’ team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

BRUSSELS — Anxiety is growing over Europe’s unusually low gas storage levels as the war in Iran threatens to spark a fight among countries over dwindling global energy supply. The EU requires member countries to maintain gas reserves at 90 percent of capacity by the winter — a measure brought in after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But this year’s colder-than-average winter depleted those reserves to under 30 percent as of March, the lowest since 2022. With gas prices soaring after Iranian attacks effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow passage through which 20 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas passes, of which 6 percent was bound for Europe —  the task of refilling those reserves by the winter carries a greater risk. Behind the scenes, government officials and industry lobbyists warn countries could rush to meet those targets all at once if the rules aren’t loosened, driving up demand and allowing traders to exploit soaring prices. That’s the dynamic that caused traders to bid up gas prices to over €300 per megawatt hour in 2022, with the lofty new storage targets compounding the sharp rise in demand that followed Russia’s supply cuts. Analysts say the difficulty in restocking those reserves will also be made more difficult by stiff competition from Asia, which is more directly exposed than Europe to the gas shipments that once flowed through the Persian Gulf. That could lead to higher mid-year gas prices, undercutting the incentive for traders to sell in the winter and store in the spring and summer. Officials stress it’s still early days. But already, multiple European governments have considered invoking existing carve-outs that allow them to relax storage targets in order to reduce the scope for bulk buying, according to three European energy officials familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, at least three countries believe the EU executive should introduce flexibilities beyond the existing framework, including lowering the target by as much as 30 percent, two of the officials said. The countries also sought a new EU mechanism to coordinate gas purchases, they added. Such policies would allow countries to fill up for the coming winter more comfortably. “With a lower target we would not be driving the demand for very high storage level filling, [and] driving the prices up,” said one of the people. The Commission hasn’t yet ruled on how best to respond, the people said. But it too has explicitly flagged the issue, both at a summit of energy ministers on Monday and previous gatherings of ambassadors and national energy experts over the past week, according to the people cited above and an EU official. A Commission spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment. In public, officials remain sanguine. For instance, Germany’s reserves are running at 22 percent capacity after Berlin pushed to lower its storage goals last year, but the country’s economy minister, Katherina Reiche, has downplayed the issue. Others are more nervous. “The status quo is unsustainable — existing mechanisms do not sufficiently ensure the security of gas supply because the incentives to fill gas storage facilities are inadequate,” Sebastian Heinermann, the managing director of German storage association INES, said in a statement Tuesday. Gas industry lobby group Eurogas has also warned that tough EU regulations governing cargoes of liquefied natural gas — which can be shipped to the highest bidder, as opposed to fixed supplies of pipeline gas — makes selling to Europe less appealing to many exporters. That further squeezes the EU’s chances of securing desperately needed fuel on an ever-tightening market.

LONDON — Donald Trump loves to make deals, and one of his closest confidants in Europe believes a pact might be within reach that could help solve both the Gulf oil crisis and the war in Ukraine in one go.  Finland’s President Alexander Stubb says he can see real potential in offering Trump what he wants: European military support to secure the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial oil shipping route that Iran has effectively blockaded in response to American and Israeli bombing.  Europe’s condition for providing such assistance? That the U.S. president delivers all the help Ukraine needs to reach an acceptable peace deal with Russia.  The idea of bargaining with Trump was put to Stubb during a question-and-answer session at London’s Chatham House think tank on Tuesday. The Finnish leader seemed surprised — and impressed. “I think it’s a really good idea,” he said, adding after a pause: “No, I think it’s actually a really good idea.” Stubb said he’d consider it further and discuss options with his team.  Finland itself doesn’t have any assets to contribute to securing the Strait of Hormuz, and it’s still far from clear what role European forces could play there. But the question of how to bolster Ukraine — and get Trump on board — is an urgent one for Europe.  Officials — including Stubb — fear the longer Trump’s war against Iran continues, the more it could constrain Ukraine’s fight against invading Russian forces. Soaring global energy prices — and Washington’s decision to loosen sanctions on Russia’s oil industry — will significantly boost Vladimir Putin’s income from Russian fossil fuel sales. At the same time, American forces are using hundreds of interceptor missiles to shoot down Iranian rockets and drones, leaving fewer available for Ukraine. Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities rely on air defenses for protection against an ongoing barrage of ballistic missiles from Russia.  And Trump has again recently pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to agree a deal with Putin, without clarifying what — if any — security guarantees America would provide to keep the peace. Stubb told his audience he feared that peace talks in Ukraine are fast approaching a moment of truth, which could force Kyiv to accept a a bad settlement that involves ceding territory to Putin. The negotiations could even collapse, leaving Europe on the hook — without American help — obliging European powers to step in to help Ukraine with more intelligence, weapons and other support, he said.  Stubb said he takes a realistic view of how much he is able to influence Trump, after the two bonded over a seven-hour golf and lunch meeting last year. Finland has just bought 64 F-35 fighter jets from the U.S. and hosts thousands of American troops training in Arctic conditions. “I have no illusions about who can convince President Trump on anything,” Stubb said. “If I get one idea out of 10 in on Ukraine, I think it’s good.” The implications of the war in Iran are “negative” for Ukraine, mainly because the price of oil favors Russia’s war machinery, Stubb said. “The Russian economy was actually doing extremely badly a couple of weeks back, now it’s bouncing back.” It’s also taking air defense systems away from where they are needed in Ukraine.  Finally, it has shifted the focus from the peace talks on Ukraine. “I hope the peace negotiations on Ukraine don’t collapse like the negotiations between Iran and the U.S. did,” Stubb said. “But time will tell.” 

LONDON — The U.K. government is expected to publish a long-awaited plan to decarbonize new homes next week, with ministers set to mandate low-carbon heating for all new-builds and solar panels on the vast majority. According to two energy sector figures briefed on the plan, the government will publish the Future Homes Standard next week. Both were granted anonymity to discuss behind-closed-doors briefings from government. One of the energy sector figures said the plan was expected Tuesday. The strategy — which has been subject to years of consultation — will likely be presented as an essential step to reduce U.K. reliance on fossil fuels and to cut energy bills in the context of the Iran war and the resulting surge in oil and gas prices, they added. “We’re expecting it to confirm that all new homes will have heat pumps or connections to low-carbon heat networks,” the person said, “and the vast majority of new homes will have solar.” The policies are in line with expectations, and the timing of the publication suggests the government is using the Middle East energy crisis to double down on green plans at home. A third energy sector figure, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, said they had expected plans for publication to be “accelerated” after Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said on Sunday the government would go “further and faster” in pursuit of clean energy and electrification. The Future Homes Standard, first planned under the previous Conservative government, has been beset by delays and lobbying by house builders concerned that some of its measures could push up costs or prove impractical. But the third energy sector figure added: “It looks like the crisis has shut up the volume house-builder lobbyists.” An official at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the FHS will mean new homes need “no future retrofitting to meet net zero” and will contribute to bringing down bills.

BRUSSELS — The European Union won’t give in to pressure to re-engage with Russia to offset surging energy prices triggered by the war in Iran, the bloc’s energy chief told reporters on Monday. “We’ve decided in the European Union that we do not want to re-import Russian energy,” Dan Jørgensen, the EU commissioner for energy, said at the sidelines of a summit of energy ministers in Brussels. “It’s extremely important that we stick to this line — we cannot in Europe help indirectly finance Russia’s brutal, illegal war,” he said. The comments come as a growing chorus of EU leaders push for a rethink of the bloc’s relationship with Russia, which threatens to upend the implementation of the EU’s historic phase-out of Russian gas. The Commission is set to announce a similar ban on oil next month. “We’ve been far too long dependent on energy from Russia, making it possible for Putin to blackmail us with energy, making it possible for Putin to weaponize energy against us, and we are determined to stay on course with these issues,” Jørgensen added. “It would be a mistake for us to repeat what we did in the past. In the future, we will not import as much as one molecule from Russia.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been among the most vocal advocates for revived Russian trade, calling on the EU to suspend sanctions on Moscow last week. On Sunday, Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever said the EU ought to negotiate with Russia to eventually “regain access to cheap energy.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has also offered to resume gas trade with the bloc, and Washington has temporarily lifted its own sanctions on the country. Jørgensen also ruled out long-term, structural changes to EU energy policy to deal with soaring prices, including reforming the electricity market design, as POLITICO reported on Sunday. Commission President Urusula von der Leyen echoed the sentiment earlier this month, saying returning to Russian oil and gas would be a “strategic blunder.”

U.S. President Donald Trump may think his war in Iran is a boon for the oil industry — but his way of putting it is causing consternation. “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,“ Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Wednesday as crude prices rose to $95 per barrel, a 40 percent increase from where they were before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran nearly two weeks ago. Trump’s post highlights the industry’s complicated relationship with the president — and its messaging conundrum. While oil companies are benefiting financially from the nearly $30-per-barrel run up in crude prices since the war started, executives are also worried that volatile prices are making business decisions difficult, and high prices will generate public backlash. “The idea that the industry profits from war and death is not one a VP of public relations wants to promote,” said Mark Jones, political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute. Trump’s post drew groans from some in the industry. “Oh, boy….” one energy industry strategist responded when shown Trump’s social media post. Trump’s message also feeds into a perception that oil companies are looking to gouge consumers, said a second industry official granted anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. “This highlights the complicated relationship the oil industry has with the president,” the industry official said. “President Trump’s overarching concern is always the price at the pump — and the lower the better. There is also some notion that the oil and gas industry secretly works to raise prices, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the industry works on a global and transparent market basis.” Trump’s post also plays into some voters’ cynicism about business in general and the oil industry in particular, said Mark Mizruchi, a University of Michigan professor who focuses on the economic and political behavior of large American corporations. “The interesting thing about Trump’s statement is that he inadvertently stated a belief that a lot of people have — that something like this happens and the oil companies will make a lot of money,” Mizruchi said. “It probably didn’t occur to him that people — including in the industry — weren’t happy about that” statement. The White House has maintained that the price of oil and gasoline — which has jumped 60 cents per gallon since the fighting started — will ultimately come down after the war because new supplies from Iran will come onto the global markets. “Ultimately, once the military objectives of Operation Epic Fury are completed and the Iranian terrorist regime is neutralized, oil and gas prices will drop rapidly again, potentially even lower than before the strikes begin,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said. “As a result, American families will benefit greatly in the long term.” In the meantime, Rogers said, the administration “has and will continue working cooperatively with leaders in the energy industry to stabilize markets.” The war is already causing difficulty for the industry. Oil companies operating solely in the United States will get pure short-term profit from the spike in prices, but large international companies may have to shut down assets they’re operating in the Persian Gulf, white the supply shock afflicting Southeast Asia and Europe could also persuade countries to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, Jones said. Andrea Woods, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement that the industry is “focused on working with the administration to ensure safe and reliable operations in the region.” “Energy market volatility does not benefit anyone, including producers who rely on certainty and stability for long-term business decisions,” Woods said. The oil industry has had a volatile relationship with Trump since his first administration, one where they benefit from some of his policies — but also suffer under others, like tariffs. And while Trump is one of the industry’s biggest cheerleaders, he has also dragged them into politics in ways industry executives are not always comfortable with. Trump on the campaign trail made a point of asking oil industry executives for a billion dollars, but the industry overall contributed $75 million, according to an analysis of campaign contributions by the environmental communications firm Climate Power — less than Trump’s campaign received from SpaceX, the firm owned by billionaire Elon Musk. Harold Hamm, the chair and founder of oil company Continental Resources and an informal energy adviser to Trump in his first and second terms, initially backed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the 2024 presidential campaign. Trump also tried to push oil company executives into publicly supporting his administration’s military action against Venezuela and promising to quickly invest in drilling for oil in the country. That move met pushback from some executives who didn’t share Trump’s optimism on how easy it would be to revive Venezuela’s oil fields. Democrats and environmental groups wasted little time to use Trump’s post to slam the administration and the oil industry. “I’ve been saying forever that Donald Trump’s energy policy is to prioritize the interest of energy producers (high prices) over consumers (low prices),” Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) said in an X post. “It appears he agrees with me.” “Instability makes oil prices soar,” Lorne Stockman, international research director at Oil Change International said in a press release response to the post. “As geopolitical tensions rise, Trump’s fossil fuel billionaire donors reap windfall profits while people are being killed and working people around the world face higher energy and food costs.” In Trump’s post, the president isn’t talking about families grappling with their bills, said Jesse Lee, a senior adviser at Climate Power. “Trump is talking about the people he cares about most — the oil and gas billionaires who spent millions of dollars to get him elected,” Lee said in an email. “Trump will always put his billionaire buddies first, and working families will always be left to pay the price.” Rising oil prices are expected to be a political liability for Republicans heading into midterm elections later this year. Even besides higher prices at the local gas station, the effect of increased crude costs will hit voter pocketbooks in a myriad of ways. Companies across a range of industries have started to implement energy surcharges to absorb higher fuel costs, Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov said in note to clients. “UPS and Maersk (shipping), Ecolab (chemicals), and Cathay Pacific (aviation) are among the firms unveiling surcharges this week,” Molchanov said in the note. “We expect more such announcements until oil prices cool meaningfully from four-year highs.”

LONDON — Keir Starmer will never persuade Donald Trump to love windmills.  But by embracing sweeping reforms of the nuclear power system, the U.K. may finally have found an energy policy the White House likes.  Downing Street on Thursday approved the Fingleton Review, a hefty report calling on the government to speed up building new nuclear power stations by relaxing planning rules, merging regulators, and working more closely with allies itching to invest in the U.K. — including the U.S.  Energy Secretary Ed Miliband touted the report as a “landmark review.” Chancellor Rachel Reeves claimed it would usher in a “new era of global uncertainty.”   But the real winners could be Stateside. “U.S. companies are eager to invest in the U.K., especially in the energy sectors,” Trump’s Ambassador to London Warren Stephens said in a newspaper column late last year.  In the documents approving the Fingleton recommendations, Starmer’s government promised to build on existing deals with the U.S., as well as other countries, “to establish an international regulatory strategy and delivery plan by Autumn 2026.”   That sort of rhetoric gives Downing Street a way to sell itself as open for exactly the sort of U.S. investment Stephens is encouraging, some insiders believe.  “It’s something that No. 10 would probably have its eye on, [given] how much it’s been trumpeting the amount of successful U.S. investment here,” said one senior industry figure familiar with the government’s approach to U.S. nuclear investment, and granted anonymity to speak candidly. They added: “It’s something that No. 10 is very, very keen on,”   ART OF THE DEAL   Starmer’s pursuit of climate-friendly policies consistently threatens to drive a wedge between London and Washington. But the U.K. government used Trump’s state visit last September to announce a series of joint deals to build new nuclear. This includes plans for British Gas owner Centrica and U.S. developer X-Energy to collaborate building 12 nuclear reactors in Hartlepool, north-east England, while Florida-headquartered Holtec has teamed up with EDF and Tritax to develop data centers powered by small modular reactors at an old coal power station in Cottam, in England’s midlands.   Those firms will “ring up the Department of Energy, they’ll ring up [Trump’s Energy Secretary] Chris Wright … and be like: ‘This is good stuff … they put their money where their mouth is,’” said a second senior industry figure, familiar with talks involving U.S. developers and referencing Thursday’s announcement. “You might not hear Trump talk about Hartlepool … but I think you would get some good sounds in the American administration,” they said.   The U.K. government has been wooing Trump on nuclear ever since last summer. “Issues like nuclear cooperation are issues where we can work together with the U.S.,” Miliband said at the time, as an alternative to U.K. policies on fossil fuels and wind turbines, which the president openly derides.  IN HIS SITES Since then, Miliband has been opening up private routes to market for new nuclear, including reforms which relax siting rules so that new nukes, in theory, could be built anywhere in the country.   He has also hinted at selling Oldbury, a plum U.K. site owned by arms-length body Great British Energy Nuclear — with space for up to five small modular reactors, or mini nuclear plants.  Oldbury is “an absolutely prime site” for private firms to sweep in, he told MPs in February. “We have lots of companies from the U.S. working with U.K. companies on these other routes to market,” he said.  Easing planning rules to build nuclear closer to urban centers could open up another site, Heysham in north-west England, to future development. That site is owned by French energy giant EDF but it, too, has been eyed for potential U.S. development.  “If we have clear action, if the government were able to give clarity and certainty on Heysham, it certainly would be a site U.S. investors would look at,” the second industry figure said, citing technical advantages like its proximity to grid connections and local transport access.     WARMING UP WARREN AND WHITEHALL Any such moves could win over Stephens, the ambassador, who jumped on X last year to express his “extreme disappointment” when Miliband’s decision to build mini-nukes in north Wales deprived U.S. nuclear giant Westinghouse of the chance to build a full-size nuclear power plant on the same site.  There are still hurdles to clear, insiders argued, whatever the political intent behind Friday’s decision.  “The tricky thing with the Fingleton Review is not just the political acceptance of it, it’s the officials’ acceptance of it,” feared a third industry figure, citing supposed skepticism about nuclear among British civil servants.   Ministers will have to ensure the plans are not “suffocated by officials,” they said, who could “just be slow, and delay and delay and delay.”   Labour peer and long-standing nuclear advocate Jon Spellar was more optimistic. The bullish response from government to the Fingleton Review showed politicians have “made clear the direction” to Whitehall, and that fears of delay would be “much less of a problem now.”