China is about to put the world’s first commercial land-based small modular reactor into operation, and it is doing so on its own terms technologically, industrially, and geopolitically.

The Linglong One, also known as the ACP100, is a 125 MWe integrated pressurised water SMR developed by China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). It was the first SMR design to pass an International Atomic Energy Agency safety review back in 2016, and its first-of-a-kind unit is being built at the Changjiang nuclear power site on Hainan island.

The European Union is quietly defusing one of the more explosive flashpoints in transatlantic energy policy: how to apply its tough new methane rules to imported oil and gas without choking off supplies from the United States.

From this year, the EU’s methane regulation obliges importers of oil and gas to monitor and report the methane emissions associated with what they bring into Europe. Over time, that escalates: from 2027, new gas supply contracts will have to comply with standards equivalent to the EU’s own methane rules, or they will not be acceptable.

The European Union’s decision to drastically narrow the scope of its flagship sustainability disclosure regime marks a clear inflection point: it lightens the regulatory load on large companies, but at the cost of weakening one of the world’s most ambitious transparency frameworks just as investors and policymakers are trying to steer trillions toward genuine low-carbon and responsible business models.

What has changed is substantial. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), initially conceived to force tens of thousands of large companies to publish detailed, standardised data on their environmental, social and governance performance, will now apply only to a much thinner slice of the corporate universe. Only firms with more than 1,000 employees and at least €450 million in turnover will be required to report, and financial institutions are excluded for now.