Fast-tracking US critical minerals projects under President Trump’s March 2025 executive order has seen some mining permits issued in as little as 20 days, prompting Oxfam America to warn that compressed timelines without robust environmental review and community consultation could trigger force majeure events, legal challenges and multimillion-dollar delays. Oxfam policy leads Emily Greenspan and Andrew Bogrand argue that IFC performance standards should be treated as a minimum and that US-backed export credit and development finance should be tied to IRMA’s more stringent audit regime. They also caution that the industry-led Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative could dilute existing benchmarks and that policymakers still underestimate the globalised nature of refining and processing, particularly in regions such as Africa’s Copperbelt.

A UK Government-commissioned feasibility assessment on building new nuclear power plants at existing Scottish nuclear sites is now unlikely to be released before the Scottish Parliament elections on 7 May. The study is expected to focus on brownfield nuclear locations such as Hunterston and Torness, assessing grid connection capacity, cooling water availability and regulatory constraints under Scotland’s current anti-nuclear policy. The delay leaves developers and consultants without key data on potential reactor siting, licensing timelines and supporting civil works for any future large-scale or SMR projects.

Ørsted has lost a UK Supreme Court case over whether it could claim tax relief on geotechnical and environmental surveys for offshore wind farms that never progressed to construction. The ruling confirms that expenditure on early-stage site investigation and feasibility work for prospective projects does not qualify as “research and development” for UK tax purposes when no tangible asset is created. Developers may now need to reprice front-end survey campaigns and reconsider how they structure pre-consent ground investigation and design studies.