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Thu, Sept 10th, 2026

Washington is writing the list of banned grid equipment by December 24, and its battery-scrap export ban has refining capacity for a tenth of the feedstock — plus record diesel, Holtec's IPO, the Navy's first microreactor and Dangote's share sale.

01Score71

Washington declared foreign grid equipment a national emergency, and the list of who is banned is due by Christmas

Summary

An executive order has prohibited installing foreign-made grid equipment tied to "covered foreign entities" since August 26, 2026, but no country, company or product has been named yet — the Energy Department opened its consultation on September 9 and must publish the rules by December 24. Grid batteries and inverters are listed by name, Chinese makers dominate the world's storage cells, and the non-Chinese storage and inverter companies have not repriced.

On August 26, 2026 President Trump signed Executive Order 14421, “Declaring a National Emergency To Secure the United States Bulk-Power System,” under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act; it was published in the Federal Register on August 31, 2026 (91 FR 55995).

It prohibits any acquisition, importation, transfer or installation of foreign-produced bulk-power system electric equipment, for transactions initiated after that date, where the Secretary of Energy determines the equipment was designed, manufactured or supplied by persons owned by, controlled by or subject to the jurisdiction of a “Covered Foreign Entity” and poses an undue risk of sabotage, remote action or supply disruption.

The covered equipment is listed expressly: substation transformers, utility-scale and other grid-connected inverters, battery energy storage systems, uninterruptible power supplies for critical infrastructure, large and small generators, generation turbines, circuit breakers, protective relays, metering and industrial control systems. The order names no country and no company.

The Secretary must publish implementing rules within 120 days (December 24, 2026), may identify particular countries or equipment for scrutiny, may impose conditions on equipment already installed — up to isolation, disconnection and replacement, with phased compliance — and must recommend Federal Acquisition Regulation changes within 180 days to prioritize US-manufactured energy infrastructure in federal purchasing.

On September 9, 2026 the Department of Energy published a request for information (docket DOE-2026-HQ-2026-1123) with responses due October 9, 2026 and a public webinar on September 16.

It asks what voltage, capacity and connectivity thresholds should define covered inverters, battery storage, UPS and generators, what domestic “secure replacement capacity” exists, and how existing equipment should be mitigated. CATL alone shipped 125 GWh of storage cells in the first half of 2026, 27.1% of the global market. Between the August 25 and September 10, 2026 closes, Fluence Energy fell from $11.24 to $9.78, Eos Energy rose from $3.54 to $3.92, Enphase fell from $37.35 to $35.63 and SolarEdge rose from $29.88 to $35.35 — no common move.

Opportunity

The obvious reading is that this is a procurement-security order like the 2020 order of the same name, which was suspended in January 2021 and had its single prohibition order revoked that April, and the absence of any group move in storage and inverter shares suggests that is how it is being read. Two things are different.

The 2020 order was about transformers and controls; this one names battery energy storage systems and grid-connected inverters explicitly, at the moment grid batteries are the fastest-growing equipment category on the US grid and the one with the highest Chinese content. And it reaches backwards: it authorizes conditions on equipment already installed, up to disconnection and replacement.

The mechanism is categorical rather than priced. A tariff makes a Chinese cell more expensive — Section 301 duties on Chinese non-EV lithium-ion batteries rose from 7.5% to 25% on January 1, 2026 and projects kept buying them. A covered-entity determination makes the cell unusable in a bulk-power project at any price. If the December rule designates Chinese cell makers, every utility-scale storage project initiated after August 26, 2026 needs cells from Korea, Japan, the United States or a non-lithium chemistry, and developers holding Chinese-supplied backlog need licences or redesigns.

Hypothesis: the market is pricing the order as a threat that the rulemaking will narrow into irrelevance, and the storage names have traded on their own execution problems rather than on the rule.

If the December rule draws the line at Chinese cells rather than at Chinese-branded systems, the scarce asset becomes non-Chinese cell capacity already on US soil — LG Energy Solution’s Michigan and Arizona lines, Samsung SDI, AESC’s Tennessee plant that feeds Fluence, Tesla’s Nevada cell plant, Eos’s zinc line — and the losers are developers with Chinese-supplied pipelines. The reverse inference is as investable: a narrow rule that spares cells removes an overhang from those same developers. Either way, the responses filed by October 9 are where the industry states its exposure in writing.

How it could play out

The DOE webinar on September 16 and the responses due October 9, 2026 force utilities, developers and integrators to quantify how much Chinese content sits in the installed fleet and the project pipeline. The implementing rules due December 24 name the covered entities and the equipment thresholds and set up a licensing or prequalification regime.

If cells are covered, non-Chinese cell capacity is bid up, storage project timelines stretch, and the existing-equipment recommendations start a monitoring-and-replacement cycle that utilities recover through rates. The FAR recommendations due by February 22, 2027 add a federal preference for US-made equipment on top.

Questions worth asking

Will the rule treat a battery system as “foreign-produced” by its cells or by its integrator? An American-assembled system built around Chinese cells is the typical US grid battery, and whether that is covered decides who wins and who loses.
Which listed developers hold the most Chinese-supplied storage backlog initiated after August 26, 2026 — NextEra, AES, Constellation, Vistra — and what fraction of it can be re-sourced without repricing the project?
How much non-Chinese storage cell capacity actually exists in North America today (LG Energy Solution, Samsung SDI, SK On, AESC, Tesla), and how much of it is contracted to carmakers rather than to grid projects?
Do non-lithium chemistries — Eos zinc, ESS iron flow, Form Energy iron-air — become the compliant default, or stay too small to matter?
Which foreign inverter suppliers are large in US utility-scale projects, Sungrow above all, and can SMA, GE Vernova, TMEIC and Power Electronics absorb the volume?
Does the existing-equipment leg create a replacement cycle for substation transformers and controls that utilities recover through the rate base — in which case the regulated utilities are beneficiaries, not victims?
Why did the 2020 order die without effect, and is there a legal or political path that kills this one the same way?

Where to look

Fluence Energy (NASDAQ: FLNC) — the largest US-listed storage integrator, contract-manufacturing in the US with AESC cells but historically dependent on Chinese cells; fell from $21.62 on June 10 to $9.78 on September 10, 2026 on its own guidance cut, so the rule is not in the price either way
Eos Energy (NASDAQ: EOSE) — US-made zinc batteries with no Chinese cells, the cleanest compliant-chemistry expression
LG Energy Solution (KRX: 373220) and Samsung SDI (KRX: 006400) — Korean cell makers whose US plants become scarce capacity if Chinese cells are covered
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) — Megapack with a Nevada cell plant; storage is a small part of a very large company
GE Vernova (NYSE: GEV), Siemens Energy (XETRA: ENR), Hitachi (TSE: 6501) — transformers, switchgear and controls that receive the “secure replacement” demand
SMA Solar (XETRA: S92), Enphase (NASDAQ: ENPH), SolarEdge (NASDAQ: SEDG) — non-Chinese inverter makers; the residential business may fall outside the bulk-power definition, which is itself a question for the rule
NextEra Energy (NYSE: NEE), AES (NYSE: AES) — the largest US storage developers, exposed if their pipelines are Chinese-supplied
CATL (SZSE: 300750), BYD (HKEX: 1211), Sungrow (SZSE: 300274) — the entities most likely to be designated

Thesis check

The order is primary text, dated, and it names battery storage and inverters explicitly; a prohibition is categorical where a tariff is a price, and the Department of Energy has a hard December 24, 2026 deadline to say what it means. What would kill it: the Department can define “Covered Foreign Entity” narrowly or license freely, the 2020 predecessor died without banning anything, and an administration that wants power for data centres quickly may decide not to bar the cheapest batteries in the world — in which case the market’s non-reaction is simply correct.

Timing

DOE consultation closes October 9, 2026; implementing rules due by December 24, 2026

Sources

Federal Register (Executive Order 14421), Aug 31 2026 · Federal Register (DOE request for information), Sep 9 2026 · Holland & Knight, Sep 2026 · mgrid.org, Aug 26 2026 · Energy-Storage.News, 2026 · Fluence Energy blog (Section 301 tariffs), 2026 · BigGo Finance (Fluence guidance cut), Aug 2026

Open on its own pageFound Sep 10power

02Score64

America banned exporting its battery scrap, and can refine about a tenth of it

Summary

Since August 27, 2026 US recyclers must sell all their lithium-ion "black mass" to American buyers, but the country has roughly 7,000 tonnes a year of refining capacity against 65,000 tonnes of feedstock — a government-made glut for the few companies that own domestic refining, and a squeeze on the recyclers who used to export.

On July 30, 2026 the President issued Presidential Determination 2026-19 under the Defense Production Act, finding recoverable critical minerals scarce and essential to national defense.

On August 6, 2026 the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security published a temporary final rule (91 FR 50701) requiring any US person selling black mass — shredded lithium-ion battery scrap containing cathode or anode material — or tungsten waste and scrap to allocate 100% of monthly sales to US persons, effective August 27, 2026 through August 27, 2027. “Sale” includes transfers to a company’s own foreign affiliates; Customs may detain shipments; BIS may grant exceptions at its discretion, aims to answer within 14 days, and will consider toll-refining abroad if the metal returns. Comments close November 4, 2026.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, citing its peer-reviewed capacity study, wrote on September 3, 2026 that North America has an overcapacity of battery shredding and an undercapacity of black mass refining: about 7,000 tonnes of refining capacity in 2026 against 65,000 tonnes of feedstock, not balanced until 2030.

The presidential determination also authorizes restrictions on end-of-life rare-earth magnets, lithium-ion batteries and swarf, and the White House fact sheet named magnets and batteries. The BRACE Act (H.R. 9615) cleared a House subcommittee on July 14, 2026 with full committee markup expected in September; a Basel Convention expert group meets September 27-29, 2026 on adding lithium, cobalt and nickel to its hazardous-waste annex.

American Battery Technology Company said on August 20, 2026 that black mass sales are the majority of its revenue, that substantially all its black mass customers are outside the United States, and that it has filed an exception request with BIS; the same day it reported record quarterly revenue of $8.2 million, $1.3 million of gross profit, $50.3 million of cash and a reinstated $57 million Department of Energy grant.

R3 Lithium opened the former Ascend Elements site in Georgia on September 4, 2026 as the first US plant to recover lithium carbonate from black mass at commercial scale. American Battery Technology closed at $2.61 on September 10, 2026 against $2.39 on August 6; Aqua Metals at $2.47 against $2.68.

Opportunity

Trade press and law firms read the rule as a problem for recyclers, and for the shredders it is: their export outlet is closed and domestic buyers cannot absorb a tenth of what they produce. Read from the other side, the same fact is a captive feedstock market.

For twelve months, 65,000 tonnes of material must find 7,000 tonnes of domestic refining or go into storage, so the price of black mass inside the United States should detach from the world price, and the refiner’s spread — between black mass and the recovered lithium, nickel and cobalt — should widen for whoever has a working plant. The Union of Concerned Scientists says as much: the companies with US refining capacity “are likely to be in high demand and to charge a premium.”

BIS built the rule with an exception valve, so the size of the glut depends on how many requests it grants, and the first decisions on requests filed in August 2026 are due within weeks of filing. Every grant leaks material out; every denial adds to domestic oversupply.

Meanwhile the Department of Energy is paying for refining capacity — $100 million grants each in August 2026 to Nth Cycle for black mass refining, to Formation Holdings for a cobalt refinery and to a Lilac Solutions vehicle for lithium carbonate, while the War Department’s Office of Strategic Capital holds a $1.4 billion conditional loan commitment to Sila Nanotechnologies — and the determination’s reach to end-of-life batteries and magnets means the feedstock side of the rule can widen before the capacity side catches up.

Hypothesis: the market has priced the rule as neutral-to-negative for the sector as a whole, but the economics split sharply between shredders (worse) and refiners (better), and the two US-listed names hold parts of both. American Battery Technology sells black mass abroad today — the losing side — while building, with federal grants, the refinery the rule was written to favour; if its exception is denied, the same company’s refining economics improve. Whether BIS grants exceptions freely is the single variable, and it is observable.

How it could play out

Exception decisions land through September and October 2026. If most are denied, US black mass prices fall below world prices, domestic refiners run full on cheap input, shredders stockpile or landfill, and lobbying intensifies into the November 4 comment deadline.

The BRACE Act markup, the EPA universal-waste rule and the Basel expert group on September 27-29 each add regulatory weight to keeping material inside the country. BIS extends the allocation to end-of-life batteries or magnets; Korean and Chinese refiners lose their US feedstock; and the August 27, 2027 expiry becomes a renewal decision with a domestic refining lobby that did not exist a year earlier.

Questions worth asking

How many of the exception requests filed in August 2026 has BIS granted, and on what terms? A rule that exempts everyone who asks changes nothing; a rule that denies the exporters creates the glut. This decides the idea.
Who actually owns the roughly 7,000 tonnes of US black mass refining capacity — Cirba Solutions, Redwood Materials, R3 Lithium, Glencore’s former Li-Cycle assets, American Battery Technology — and how much of it is listed?
Where does US black mass now trade relative to the Korean import price, and has the discount appeared yet?
Which foreign refiners lose the US feedstock — SungEel HiTech, Ecopro, and Canada’s Electra Battery Materials, which is not a US person — and how much of their supply was American?
If the allocation is extended to end-of-life lithium-ion batteries and permanent magnets, who owns the US processing capacity for those?
Tungsten scrap is the other half of the rule: who refines tungsten scrap domestically — Global Tungsten & Powders, Kennametal, Buffalo Tungsten — and does a captive scrap market matter with tungsten at record prices under China’s export controls?
Does the Basel Convention move on lithium, cobalt and nickel make the export ban permanent by other means?

Where to look

American Battery Technology Company (NASDAQ: ABAT) — sells black mass to foreign buyers today and is building a refinery with federal grants; both sides of the rule in one microcap
Aqua Metals (NASDAQ: AQMS) — small Nevada black mass refining operation; the pure but tiny domestic-refiner expression
Glencore (LSE: GLEN) — owner of the former Li-Cycle assets; immaterial to the group, but the only large company with US recycling capacity
Electra Battery Materials (NASDAQ: ELBM) — Ontario refinery that cannot buy US black mass as a non-US person; the listed loser
SungEel HiTech (KOSDAQ: 365340) and Ecopro (KOSDAQ: 086520) — Korean refiners that took US black mass exports
Kennametal (NYSE: KMT) — recycles tungsten carbide scrap domestically; the tungsten half of the rule
Cirba Solutions, Redwood Materials, R3 Lithium, Nth Cycle — private owners of the scarce capacity; watch for financings or listings

Thesis check

The rule is primary and in force, the capacity gap comes from published research, and the mechanism — a closed export door and a domestic refining base a tenth the size of the feedstock — is arithmetic. What would kill it: the Bureau of Industry and Security wrote itself an exception valve and the industry has already lined up to use it, so if exceptions are granted freely the domestic price never detaches and nothing happens. The other constraint is expression: American Battery Technology and Aqua Metals are microcaps trading under $3, and the largest capacity owners are private.

Timing

Exception decisions pending; comments close November 4, 2026; rule expires August 27, 2027

Sources

Federal Register (BIS temporary final rule), Aug 6 2026 · Resource Recycling, Aug 5 2026 · National Law Review (Beveridge & Diamond), Aug 11 2026 · Union of Concerned Scientists, Sep 3 2026 · American Battery Technology Company (8-K exhibit), Aug 20 2026 · Resource Recycling (R3 Lithium), Sep 4 2026 · Global Trade Alert (DOE grants), Sep 1 2026

Open on its own pageFound Sep 10policy

Also worth knowing

US diesel hit a record $5.967 a gallon and the refining margin on it passed $100 a barrel — The national on-highway average rose 36.8 cents in the week to September 7, 2026, above the June 2022 nominal high, and the diesel crack spread set an intraday record of $108.02 a barrel on September 9; about 900,000 barrels a day of diesel moved through the Gulf before the war.

The refiners have already run — Valero went from $257.99 on June 10 to $386.33 on September 10, 2026 — so the unexploited side is who pays: harvest-season farming, trucking without full surcharge pass-through, and the airlines behind a jet fuel spot price of $3.72 a gallon at the end of August.
Holtec Nuclear launched a $900 million IPO at up to a $10.2 billion valuation — On September 8, 2026 Holtec began the roadshow for 50 million Class A shares at $15 to $18, listing on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas as HNUC, with Palisades restart fuel loading under way and two SMR-300 units planned for the same Michigan site.

It is the first listed company that both restarts a shut reactor and sells a small modular reactor design, so its pricing sets a mark for how much of the nuclear premium survives contact with an actual balance sheet.
The Navy will put its first shore-based nuclear microreactor at Crane, Indiana by September 2028 — The Department of War said on September 9, 2026 that a commercially owned and operated Micro Modular Reactor will supply Naval Weapons Station Crane independent of the grid, under the Army’s Janus Program, with the vendor not yet named.

The first dated military microreactor site is a contract somebody wins; the capitalised “Micro Modular Reactor” wording is the trade name of one particular design, which is worth checking before the award is announced.
Dangote’s refinery opens Africa’s largest-ever share sale on September 14 — The 700,000-barrel-a-day Lagos refinery signed offer documents on September 7, 2026 for 4.1 billion shares at N525 (about $0.40), raising about $1.63 billion toward a $14.3 billion plan to double capacity by 2029; it earned $1.82 billion after tax in the first half of 2026 after losing $476 million in all of 2025, on jet and diesel exports into Europe.

The swing from loss to profit is the Hormuz diesel premium landing in one plant’s accounts; Nigeria’s exchange is up 73% in dollars this year, and the listing would dominate it.
Memory makers’ inventories fell below ten days of supply — The Chosun Daily reported on September 8, 2026, citing KB Securities, that memory inventories at the manufacturers are under ten days of supply; Korea’s KOSPI traded above 7,000 on September 9 on the same names.

Nothing new in direction, but the inventory floor is where price spikes stop being orderly, and the customers who lose the allocation fight are the second-order story.
December corn settled at a nine-month high of $5.46 ahead of Friday’s crop report — September 9, 2026 settlements put December corn 27% above its late-June low and September corn at $5.22, after a mid-July heat dome and warm August nights; the USDA supply-and-demand report is due September 11.

A grain rally arriving on top of a sulphur and phosphate squeeze changes farm margins and fertilizer affordability in opposite directions, and the report is the first official yield number since the heat.
Russia carved a 300,000-tonne export quota out of its sulphur ban — In August 2026 Moscow allowed a temporary quota for lower-grade technical sulphur through December 31 while keeping the wider ban on liquid, granulated and lump sulphur that it extended in June; sulphur had risen more than 80% from January to April on the Hormuz closure and China’s sulphuric acid export ban.

A quota is the first loosening on the supply side of a feedstock that phosphate fertilizer and copper leaching both depend on; if more follows, the acid-price windfall at smelters starts to fade.
Chemours, DuPont and Corteva settled North Carolina’s PFAS claims for $455 million — The September 10, 2026 agreement with the state and 11 local entities near the Fayetteville Works plant pays over 15 years, about $355 million in present value, with Chemours carrying half and calling it covered by existing accruals; Chemours closed at $15.31, near its three-month low, after a guidance cut on August 4.

One more piece of the liability overhang is now a number; whether the remaining personal-injury and other-state claims are large enough to keep the stock where it is is the question a settlement invites.
Volkswagen plans to cut 100,000 jobs and may stop building electric cars at four plants — Electrek reported the plan on September 3, 2026, days before Volkswagen said its new ID. Polo had sold out with more than 30,000 orders and a ten-month waiting list.

A carmaker cutting EV plants while its cheapest EV is oversubscribed is a capacity-mix problem, not a demand problem, and the suppliers tied to the plants that close are the ones to check.
Britain’s new space strategy leaves rocket launch to Germany and other allies — The UK Space Strategy published September 9, 2026 defines “assured access to space” without a sovereign British launcher, and leaves most of the country’s European Launcher Challenge funding unallocated.

One fewer national launcher programme means the German and Spanish startups that won European Space Agency contracts in August face less subsidised competition, and the UK money still has to go somewhere.
The FCC wants unlicensed Wi-Fi-band devices to talk directly to satellites — A proposed rule published September 8, 2026 would let unlicensed devices in the 902-928 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands communicate with satellites on a non-interference basis, with comments due November 9.

If it goes through, ordinary sensors and consumer devices get a satellite path without a licensed carrier, which is a new addressable market for the operators with the right orbits and a new question for the terrestrial carriers.
Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington is set for September 24, and a senator says Chinese cars may be on the table — Xi is to arrive with a large business delegation; Senator Elissa Slotkin said on September 9, 2026 she had heard the administration might open the US market to Chinese EVs as part of a deal, without naming a source, and the White House has announced nothing.

Chinese cars face a 100% additional tariff plus connected-vehicle rules today; even a factory-only concession would reorder the US auto supplier map, so the summit agenda is worth reading when it is published.

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