Fusion energy has spent decades on the sidelines of the global energy system. Scientists praised its potential, policymakers admired its promise, and investors waited patiently for proof that it could work outside the lab. Now, that long wait appears to be ending.
General Fusion’s planned listing on Nasdaq marks a clear shift in how fusion energy is viewed. The Vancouver-based company has agreed to merge with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III, a move that would make it the world’s first publicly traded pure-play fusion energy company. Once the deal closes, General Fusion is expected to trade under the ticker symbol GFUZ.
More importantly, the transaction signals that fusion is moving beyond theory. It is stepping into capital markets, where timelines, costs, and performance matter.
AI, Electrification, and Data Centers Are Driving a New Energy Boom
Electricity demand is rising faster than grids can comfortably handle. According to the International Energy Agency, global power demand could grow by 40-50% by 2035.
This surge is not coming from a single source. Instead, it reflects a mix of electrified transport, electric heating, advanced manufacturing, and rapid digital expansion.
At the same time, artificial intelligence has become a major driver of energy. Data centers now consume enormous amounts of electricity, and demand continues to climb. In the United States, the Department of Energy estimates that data center power use could double or even triple by 2028.
Solar and wind have expanded quickly and remain essential to decarbonisation. However, they depend on the weather and daylight. Batteries help smooth supply, but they cannot yet support large-scale, long-duration demand on their own. As a result, the need for clean, reliable baseload power is becoming urgent.
This is where fusion enters the conversation.
Why Fusion Energy Stands Apart
Fusion works by combining light atoms, usually hydrogen isotopes, to release energy. It is the same process that powers the sun. Unlike nuclear fission, which splits heavy atoms and produces long-lived radioactive waste, fusion generates far less waste and carries no risk of meltdown.
The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that fusion can produce four times more energy per unit of fuel than fission and nearly four million times more energy than coal or oil. Just as important, fusion fuel is abundant and widely available.
These features make fusion attractive not just as a clean energy source, but as a foundation for long-term energy security.
General Fusion’s Different Path to Fusion Power
While many fusion developers rely on massive superconducting magnets or powerful laser systems, General Fusion has taken a different route. The company focuses on Magnetized Target Fusion, or MTF, a design intended to simplify fusion hardware and reduce costs.
MTF creates a hot plasma and stabilises it with magnetic fields. Then, instead of squeezing the plasma with magnets or lasers, the system mechanically compresses it using a liquid lithium liner. This rapid compression raises temperature and pressure to fusion conditions.
General Fusion argues that this approach avoids some of the complexity that has slowed other fusion concepts. It also allows the use of existing industrial materials, rather than highly specialised components. Over time, this could make fusion power plants more durable and more affordable.
LM26 Marks a Critical Step Forward
In early 2025, General Fusion announced a major milestone. The company had designed, built, and begun operating Lawson Machine 26, known as LM26. This system represents the world’s first large-scale MTF fusion demonstration built at a commercially relevant size.
LM26 operates at half the diameter of a future commercial reactor. It mechanically compresses plasma using a lithium liner, closely mirroring how a full-scale plant would function. The machine aims to reach several critical technical targets, including heating plasma to 10 million degrees Celsius, then to 100 million degrees Celsius, and ultimately achieving the Lawson criterion.
Reaching the Lawson criterion matters because it defines the conditions required for net fusion energy within the plasma. General Fusion plans to use proceeds from the SPAC transaction to advance LM26 testing and move closer to that goal.
Two Decades of Work Behind the Headlines
The company has spent 20 years developing fusion technology, steadily building both scientific credibility and engineering expertise.
During that time, General Fusion assembled a strong intellectual property portfolio, with more than 210 patents issued or pending. It also became one of only a few private fusion companies worldwide to publish peer-reviewed fusion results. Since its founding, it has raised more than US$400 million from institutional investors, strategic partners, venture firms, and government programs.
This long track record helps explain why investors are willing to back the company as it moves into public markets.
General Fusion’s Big Leap into Public Markets
The proposed business combination with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III implies a pro-forma equity value of roughly US$1 billion. The transaction includes about US$105 million from a committed and oversubscribed PIPE financing, along with US$230 million from SVAC’s trust account, assuming no redemptions.
The companies expect to complete the transaction in mid-2026, pending regulatory and shareholder approvals. After closing, the combined business plans to operate under the General Fusion name and list its shares and warrants on Nasdaq.
Spring Valley brings deep experience in energy and nuclear markets. Its leadership team has completed dozens of energy and decarbonization transactions and previously helped take NuScale Power public, marking the first listing of a small modular reactor company.
Strong Market Tailwinds Support Fusion
Beyond company-specific progress, broader market forces are pushing fusion forward. Electricity demand continues to rise as economies electrify. Governments are searching for clean energy sources that do not compromise grid stability.
Meanwhile, large technology firms are actively seeking reliable, carbon-free power to support AI growth.
- Industry estimates suggest the fusion energy sector could reach between US$40 billion and US$80 billion by the mid-2030s. If commercial deployment accelerates, the market could exceed US$350 billion by 2050.
Early fusion plants will likely focus on grid-scale baseload electricity, with hydrogen production and industrial heat applications following later.
However, General Fusion’s Nasdaq move does not mean fusion power is ready for mass use yet. The technology still faces major challenges, including scaling reactors, improving materials, and proving long-term reliability.
Still, the listing marks a turning point. Fusion is shifting from a scientific experiment to a real commercial contender. Public markets will bring more funding, clearer timelines, and stronger scrutiny.
The next decade will determine whether fusion can move from demonstrations to operational power plants. With electricity demand rising and clean baseload options limited, fusion is finally stepping into the spotlight. The fusion era is no longer just an idea — it is starting to take shape.
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The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.
The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.
This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.
The two definitions, in plain English
Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.
Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.
The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.
What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says
The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).
For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.
For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.
A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.
When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)
Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:
- The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
- The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
- The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
- It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.
The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.
When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.
The procurement and supplier engagement question
Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.
To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.
The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.
Choosing the right tool for the right target
A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.
The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.
If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.
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