The UK government is introducing the Small Business Protections Bill (Commercial Payments Bill) to parliament, imposing a statutory 60‑day cap on payment terms for large firms and mandatory interest on late payments to smaller suppliers. The bill grants the Small Business Commissioner new powers to investigate, adjudicate and levy fines worth tens of millions of pounds on persistent late payers. For construction, a planned ban on cash retentions could significantly alter contract structures, cashflow management, and security arrangements for defects and incomplete works.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright has issued an emergency order requiring Midcontinent Independent System Operator and Consumers Energy to keep the J.H. Campbell coal-fired plant in West Olive, Michigan available through 16 August 2026 to address critical summer grid reliability risks. The 3-unit plant, originally slated for closure on 31 May 2025, has been run during peak demand and low wind/solar periods and was key in stabilising the grid during recent winter storms. DOE’s Resource Adequacy Report and NERC’s 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment both flag MISO as high risk, with DOE warning outage frequency could rise 100-fold by 2030 if firm capacity is retired too quickly.

Greenland’s long-running dispute over Energy Transition Minerals’ Kvanefjeld rare earth and uranium-linked deposit shows that execution risk in permitting and regulatory stability can derail critical-minerals projects as effectively as metallurgy or ore grade. Alina Karpunina of GEM Mining Consulting argues that investors now price in years of legal conflict as a project cost, demanding higher premiums or walking away when uranium thresholds under Greenland’s 2021 law and shifting political signals make approvals look fragile. While projects like Malmbjerg molybdenum, Amitsoq graphite and Tanbreez progress under the 2025–2029 Mineral Resources Strategy and the 2023 EU-Greenland raw-materials partnership, she warns that unclear, revisable rules can render “strategic” deposits effectively unfinanceable.