NPR's A Martinez speaks to Holly Dagres, senior fellow at the Washington Institute, about how the Iranian regime's understanding of U.S. politics informs its war strategy.

NPR's A Martinez asks longtime U.S. diplomat Richard Haass about peace plans for Gaza after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected an agreement with Hamas proposed by President Trump.

Quanto vale oggi il gas all’ingrosso? Il prezzo PSV e le tendenze del momento

Il 25 Ottobre 2026 il prezzo medio del gas al PSV è pari a 0,988 euro/Smc, equivalente a 92,44 euro/MWh. Rispetto al giorno precedente, quando quotava 92,05 euro/MWh (0,984 euro/Smc), il prezzo è aumentato dello 0,42%.

Nel corso di ottobre il PSV ha mostrato una tendenza complessivamente rialzista: dal valore di 75,01 euro/MWh del 1 Ottobre è salito a 92,44 euro/MWh il 25 Ottobre, con un incremento di circa il 23,2%. La crescita non è stata lineare: dopo una fase di rialzi, tra il 19 e il 24 Ottobre le quotazioni sono rimaste su livelli elevati e hanno alternato aumenti e lievi arretramenti. Il dato più recente conferma la permanenza del prezzo sopra 0,98 euro/Smc.

Andamento giornaliero del PSV

Il PSV, acronimo di Punto di scambio virtuale, è il mercato all’ingrosso del gas naturale in Italia. È il punto virtuale in cui gli operatori scambiano gas immesso nella rete nazionale. Le sue quotazioni sono un riferimento per la formazione dei prezzi delle offerte indicizzate, ma la bolletta finale comprende anche trasporto, oneri, imposte e le condizioni commerciali del fornitore.

Andamento del Future TTF del gas

Il TTF, acronimo di Title Transfer Facility, è il principale hub virtuale di scambio del gas naturale nei Paesi Bassi e uno dei più importanti riferimenti europei. I prezzi riportati sono convertiti da euro/MWh a euro/Smc applicando il fattore 0,01069.

Le quotazioni del TTF hanno accelerato nella parte finale del periodo osservato: il valore è passato da 69,74 euro/MWh il 30 Settembre a 93,369 euro/MWh il 24 Ottobre, pari a circa 0,998 euro/Smc. Nell’ultimo giorno disponibile il future è cresciuto del 2,93% rispetto al 23 Ottobre. Nel complesso il rialzo dal 30 Settembre è di circa il 33,8%; dopo una fase più debole a fine settembre, i prezzi sono risaliti con continuità in ottobre, con alcune flessioni giornaliere.

Andamento del TTF negli ultimi 60 giorni

Nas eleições presidenciais de 2027 estará em jogo, não a alternância no poder, mas uma possível rutura. Qual? Para evitar a rutura que a vitória do Rassemblement National provocaria, uma parte da esquerda mobiliza-se contra o risco do fascismo. E negligencia uma outra hipótese… No grande jogo das previsões sobre o futuro político da França, há uma que, desde há duas décadas, esmaga a concorrência nos debates da esquerda: «O fascismo!», visto no sentido de estarmos a caminhar diretamente na (…)

There are regular warnings that France risks succumbing to fascism. But Mussolini's Italy may not be the model that attracts the far right; it could be Binyamin Netanyahu's de facto apartheid state.

Quanto costa oggi un metro cubo di gas? Il PSV, il riferimento del mercato all’ingrosso, è aggiornato quotidianamente; il suo andamento può incidere sulle offerte indicizzate e, nel tempo, sulla spesa in bolletta. Il costo effettivo dipende però anche dai consumi, dalle condizioni del contratto e dalle altre componenti applicate.

Nel mercato tutelato, il prezzo della sola materia prima gas per oggi 25 Ottobre 2026 è fissato da ARERA in 0,843182 €/Smc, l’ultimo valore mensile disponibile, relativo a Settembre 2026. A questo si aggiungono costi di trasporto, oneri e imposte, che variano per ogni utente. Nel mercato libero, invece, il prezzo di uno Smc di metano è stabilito dalle singole società.

Prezzo della materia prima in €/Smc
Tutelato: prezzo definito mensilmente da ARERA. Libero: varia da fornitore a fornitore, spesso è legato al PSV oppure bloccato per 12 o 24 mesi.

Il costo del gas per i clienti del servizio di tutela della vulnerabilità

Per i clienti vulnerabili che usufruiscono del servizio di tutela, l’ultimo prezzo ARERA disponibile per la materia prima è 0,843182 €/Smc, riferito a Settembre 2026. Il valore è aumentato del 22,8% rispetto ai 0,686448 €/Smc di Agosto 2026. È un prezzo della sola componente di approvvigionamento, non il costo complessivo del gas in bolletta.

Il dato del PSV offre un’indicazione sull’andamento all’ingrosso, ma non coincide direttamente con il prezzo tutelato mensile. Il 25 Ottobre 2026 il PSV si attesta a 92,44 €/MWh: è in aumento dello 0,4% rispetto al giorno precedente e si trova vicino al massimo degli ultimi 30 giorni, pari a 93,11 €/MWh.

Il costo del gas nel mercato libero

Nel mercato libero il prezzo della materia prima può essere fisso, cioè bloccato per un periodo definito, in genere 12 o 24 mesi, oppure indicizzato e quindi collegato all’andamento del PSV secondo le condizioni contrattuali. Le offerte cambiano da un operatore all’altro e possono includere sconti, bonus o servizi aggiuntivi: per confrontarle occorre verificare prezzo, eventuali quote fisse e durata delle condizioni economiche.

Come si compone il prezzo in bolletta

La bolletta comprende diverse voci: materia prima, trasporto e gestione del contatore, oneri di sistema e imposte. Nel servizio tutelato i valori delle componenti sono regolati secondo le disposizioni applicabili. Nel mercato libero trasporto, oneri e imposte restano regolati, mentre il prezzo della materia gas è definito dal fornitore in base all’offerta sottoscritta.

Quanto spenderai in bolletta

La tabella riporta una stima puramente indicativa della sola spesa per la materia prima, calcolata applicando 0,843182 €/Smc, ultimo prezzo ARERA disponibile, a consumi annui ipotetici. Il numero di componenti del nucleo familiare non determina da solo i consumi: riscaldamento, acqua calda, efficienza dell’abitazione e abitudini incidono sensibilmente. Sono esclusi trasporto, oneri, imposte e quote fisse.

Nel mercato libero la spesa per la materia prima può risultare più alta o più bassa in base all’offerta attiva; le cifre sono quindi indicative e non rappresentano il totale della bolletta. Per stimare il costo effettivo è necessario considerare i consumi reali e tutte le componenti riportate nel contratto e in fattura.

PUN (Prezzo Unico Nazionale): il prezzo base all’ingrosso

Il 25 Ottobre 2026 il PUN si attesta a 224,22 €/MWh, pari a 0,224 €/kWh. Il valore è in calo del 3,3% rispetto al giorno precedente, quando era pari a circa 0,232 €/kWh. È inoltre inferiore del 7,4% alla media degli ultimi sette giorni, pari a 0,242 €/kWh, ma resta del 2,7% sopra la media degli ultimi trenta giorni, di 0,218 €/kWh.

Negli ultimi trenta giorni il prezzo ha oscillato tra 0,173 e 0,263 €/kWh. Il dato odierno non è vicino né al massimo né al minimo del periodo. Il PUN rappresenta il riferimento all’ingrosso: non coincide con il prezzo finale pagato in bolletta, che comprende anche componenti commerciali, rete, oneri e imposte.

Arera – Tariffa tutelata: monoraria e bioraria (F1 / F2–F3)

I valori Arera disponibili riguardano i prezzi delle fasce per il servizio tutelato e si fermano a Settembre 2026. Per quel mese, i prezzi indicati sono pari a 0,242 €/kWh in F1, 0,174 €/kWh in F2 e 0,304 €/kWh in F3; il valore monorario F0 è 0,205 €/kWh. Si tratta di prezzi in €/MWh convertiti in €/kWh. Non sono disponibili nel contesto i valori tutelati di Ottobre 2026, quindi non è possibile proporre un confronto aggiornato per il mese in corso.

La tariffa monoraria applica un prezzo unico ai consumi, mentre quella bioraria distingue le fasce orarie: F1 corrisponde in genere alle ore diurne dei giorni lavorativi; F2 e F3 comprendono le ore serali, notturne, i fine settimana e i festivi, secondo le definizioni previste dalla tariffa.

Costo energia elettrica nel mercato libero

Nel mercato libero il costo della componente energia dipende dall’offerta sottoscritta: può essere indicizzato al PUN oppure a prezzo fisso, e può includere spread e quote commerciali. Per un’offerta indicizzata, il PUN di oggi costituisce un riferimento di 0,224 €/kWh, ma non equivale necessariamente al prezzo applicato al cliente. Per conoscere la spesa effettiva occorre verificare le condizioni economiche del contratto e le altre voci riportate in bolletta.

Cosa significa per le famiglie

Sintesi immediata: il PUN è pari a 0,224 €/kWh, ma non rappresenta il costo completo della luce per la famiglia. Il prezzo finale include anche trasporto e gestione del contatore, oneri di sistema, imposte e le eventuali componenti commerciali previste dall’offerta. Con i dati forniti non è possibile calcolare un costo complessivo per kWh, tasse e oneri inclusi.

Per dare un ordine di grandezza, una famiglia che consuma 2.700 kWh l’anno (circa 225 kWh al mese, equivalenti a 7,4 kWh al giorno) spenderebbe circa 50,45 € al mese per la sola energia, se tutti i consumi fossero valorizzati al PUN odierno di 0,224 €/kWh. La cifra è puramente indicativa: non è una stima della bolletta completa e non considera il prezzo contrattuale effettivo, le altre componenti o la distribuzione dei consumi nelle fasce orarie.

Cartello riassuntivo
Data: 25 Ottobre 2026
PUN: 0,224 €/kWh
Variazione giornaliera: -3,3%
Media 7 giorni: 0,242 €/kWh
Media 30 giorni: 0,218 €/kWh
Esempio 2.700 kWh/anno: circa 50,45 €/mese per la sola energia al PUN odierno

Andamento storico dei prezzi dell’energia

La serie giornaliera disponibile mostra un aumento progressivo del PUN: da 0,095 €/kWh il 25 Ottobre 2025 a 0,224 €/kWh il 25 Ottobre 2026. Nell’ultimo mese il prezzo ha raggiunto un massimo di 0,263 €/kWh il 19 Ottobre 2026 e un minimo di 0,173 €/kWh il 27 Settembre 2026. Dopo la flessione rispetto al picco recente, il valore odierno resta superiore alla media mensile, ma non si colloca vicino agli estremi degli ultimi trenta giorni.

Il dato va interpretato come riferimento all’ingrosso e non come previsione della bolletta: l’importo effettivo dipende dall’offerta scelta, dai consumi e dalle componenti regolate applicabili.

Il PUN del 25 Ottobre 2026 si attesta a 0,224224 €/kWh. Nell’ultimo giorno di osservazione i prezzi orari sono oscillati tra un minimo di 0,149614 €/kWh e un massimo di 0,283569 €/kWh. L’energia è risultata più economica alle ore 13 e più costosa alle ore 21.

Andamento giornaliero del PUN

Andamento mensile del PUN

Andamento del PUN

Nel breve periodo il prezzo giornaliero mostra oscillazioni marcate: dopo il rialzo del 19 Ottobre 2026, il valore è sceso nei giorni successivi, pur alternando nuovi aumenti e flessioni. Il dato del 25 Ottobre, in calo del 3,30% rispetto al giorno precedente, resta quindi inserito in un quadro di volatilità.

La tendenza di medio-lungo periodo è invece nettamente crescente. La media mensile è passata da 0,107021 €/kWh nell’Ottobre 2025 a 0,223541 €/kWh nell’Ottobre 2026, più che raddoppiando nell’arco di un anno. Anche negli ultimi mesi la crescita è stata sostenuta, con un aumento dai 0,157038 €/kWh di Luglio ai 0,207542 €/kWh di Settembre; il dato di Ottobre è aggiornato al 25 del mese.

Cos’è il PUN

Il PUN, o Prezzo Unico Nazionale, è il riferimento del mercato all’ingrosso italiano dell’energia elettrica. Esprime il prezzo dell’energia scambiata sul mercato e può variare nel tempo in base, tra gli altri fattori, alla domanda, alla disponibilità degli impianti e alle condizioni di produzione e approvvigionamento.

Impatto su offerte indicizzate
Per le offerte luce indicizzate, le variazioni del PUN si riflettono sulla componente energia secondo le condizioni stabilite dal contratto. Un prezzo all’ingrosso in aumento può quindi tradursi in una spesa maggiore, mentre una diminuzione può ridurre il costo della componente energia. Il prezzo finale in bolletta comprende anche le altre voci previste, come trasporto, oneri e imposte.

Implicazioni per la gestione della domanda
Quando il contratto e il contatore consentono di valorizzare i consumi per fascia oraria, spostare alcune attività flessibili verso le ore meno costose può aiutare a contenere la spesa. È utile confrontare le fasce e le condizioni della propria offerta, senza trascurare le abitudini di consumo e le eventuali quote fisse.

Ogni giorno dalle 8.30 del mattino, QuiFinanza vi informa sul costo dei carburanti in tutte le regioni italiane. Il costo medio attuale è di 2.024 per la benzina, 2.261 per il diesel, 0.798 per il gpl, 2.001 per il metano. Per sapere il prezzo esatto nella tua regione scorri in basso per tutti i dettagli di costo. Il costo medio si riferisce al prezzo mostrato dai distributori di carburanti presenti sulle strade comunali, provinciali e statali.

Abruzzo

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Abruzzo.

Basilicata

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Basilicata.

Bolzano

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella provincia autonoma di Bolzano.

Calabria

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Calabria.

Campania

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Campania.

Emilia Romagna

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Emilia Romagna.

Friuli Venezia Giulia

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Friuli Venezia Giulia.

Lazio

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Lazio.

Liguria

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Liguria.

Lombardia

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Lombardia.

Marche

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Marche.

Molise

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Molise.

Piemonte

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Piemonte.

Puglia

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Puglia.

Sardegna

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Sardegna.

Sicilia

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Sicilia.

Toscana

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Toscana.

Trento

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella provincia autonoma di Trento.

Umbria

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Umbria.

Valle d’Aosta

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Valle d’Aosta.

Veneto

Questo è il prezzo di benzina, diesel, gpl e metano di oggi 25 ottobre 2026 nella regione Veneto.

Fonte: Osservatorio prezzi Mimit

This week, Mark Leonard welcomes Camille Grand, secretary general of ASD Europe and special adviser to ECFR’s European Security programme, and Marta Prochwicz Jazowska, deputy head of ECFR’s Warsaw office and policy fellow, to discuss what the outcome of the NATO summit in Ankara means for Europe’s security. They draw on ECFR’s recent policy brief “Making defence European again” to assess whether the alliance has emerged stronger—or simply avoided a crisis.

European leaders left Ankara relieved that US president Donald Trump has reaffirmed US support for NATO and avoided announcing major troop withdrawals, but fundamental questions about Washington’s long-term commitment remain unresolved. Mark, Camille and Marta explore how Europe can strengthen its own defence capabilities while maintaining NATO as the cornerstone of collective security.

Can Europe build the military capabilities it still lacks? How should responsibilities be divided between NATO, the EU and smaller coalitions of willing states? What would a more credible European nuclear deterrent look like? And can Europe strengthen its own defence without weakening the transatlantic alliance?

This podcast episode was recorded on July 9th 2026.

Bookshelf ·

The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark ·

The Great Delusion by John J. Mearsheimer

Source

Problem

Italy’s 2027 electoral campaign has begun. So far, the contest has been defined by opposition parties exploiting what they see as prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s flaws in government policy on Russia, Ukraine and defence spending.

One person in particular is fuelling this criticism: former general Roberto Vannacci and his far-right party, National Future (Futuro Nazionale). With Meloni struggling to justify her commitment to Ukraine, NATO and the EU, and an Italian left radicalising along pacifist lines, National Future embodies an ideological nationalism which could prove indispensable for Italy’s right-wing bloc ahead of 2027.

Vannacci is also a Trojan horse for Russian influence inside Italy. He has publicly stated that he would have “no problem” accepting party and legal funding from Moscow or Beijing, and has adopted a transactional, sovereigntist posture modelled closely on Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Domestically, this is an easy argument to win: a recent ECFR policy brief confirmed that Italians are favourable to resuming imports of Russian gas and oil. This openness to Russia is compounded by his military past: Vannacci was Italy’s military attaché in Moscow, raising anxieties about counterintelligence and security.

Should National Future enter a governing coalition, Vannacci’s background could shatter the EU’s collective security consensus. A Rome influenced by Vannacci would actively block EU defence initiatives, veto sanctions and leak sensitive security coordination. For Meloni, normalising Vannacci would trigger an immediate rupture with the European mainstream with which she has been cooperating since 2022. Ultimately, he alone could paralyse Brussels’ capacity as a coherent geopolitical actor.

Solution

To fully grasp the extent of the danger that Vannacci poses to the EU, Europeans need to look beyond the playbook of contemporary European populism. While figures like Marine Le Pen have spent years achieving dédiabolisation—meticulously distancing themselves from Vladimir Putin’s regime to capture mainstream credibility—Vannacci is highly likely to align himself with the pro-Russia Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Italians and Europeans alike should thus not treat National Future as just another right-wing movement. Instead, Vannacci—who also sits in the European Parliament—should be dealt with as a strategic issue. Whether or not National Future joins a second Meloni government, his party’s emergence demonstrates that Europe’s mainstream must no longer simply contain the far right or the far left. Now Europeans need to preserve the credibility of democratic politics as new radical actors reshape the political landscape.

Meloni should exclude National Future from any form of governance. She needs to resist this new far-right siren call by using the political capital she has built in the EU since 2022: she has been at the forefront of support for Ukraine, collaboration on trade, initiatives on migration, and contributions to EU reactions to international developments. Importantly, Meloni has maintained a friendly relationship with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

However, the conservative mainstream also needs to react. It is normalising anti-EU parties by seeking their political support at the EU level and in the European Parliament. Building a cordon sanitaire around anti-EU forces requires everyone’s engagement: EU conservative leaders should work together to show their voters that they reject such extreme views. Pragmatic collaboration will also help overcome some divisions which are freezing decision-making on issues such as Russian security threats and migration.

Context

Meloni entered office in 2022 and gradually established herself as a pragmatic conservative leader, separate from more openly revisionist forces on the European right. But her recent decision not to attend a Coalition of the Willing meeting in Paris on July 13th highlights the pressure she is under, ahead of Italy’s 2027 election, to focus on domestic commitments instead of European debates on Russia, Ukraine and defence.

Here, Vannacci is a key force. National Future, which he founded only four months ago, is polling around 6% and establishing itself as the second-largest force in Italy’s right-wing bloc. Vannacci’s platform combines nationalist rhetoric, opposition to military support for Ukraine, openness to legally permissible Russian and Chinese electoral funding, and a confrontational approach to liberal democratic values.

His ideological trajectory mirrors the social architecture, ethnonationalism and systemic Euroscepticism of the AfD. Vannacci is not constrained by regional economic interests or coalition dynamics, unlike the leader of Italy’s right-wing League party, Matteo Salvini. This defines Vannacci as a loose cannon; National Future is well-positioned to capitalise on societal anxieties and economic grievances to pull the Overton window toward radical revisionism.

Source

Summary

• Biomanufacturing uses biological processes to produce food, fuels, chemicals and materials that today rely on fossil resources.
• The underlying science is not new. But advances in AI and falling renewable energy costs are transforming biomanufacturing from a niche climate solution into a new production paradigm, with the potential to reshape industrial competitiveness and geopolitical power much as fossil fuels did in the previous industrial age.
• China has identified biomanufacturing as a strategic technology for resilience and self-reliance, deploying a familiar playbook of state-backed investment and infrastructure to build globally competitive industries.
• Europe remains a formidable competitor, leading in patents and core technologies, with world-class research, specialised industrial clusters, skilled talent and globally competitive firms across the value chain.
• Its weaknesses are limited infrastructure, regulatory delays and growing dependence on Chinese manufacturing capacity.
• Without greater urgency, Europe risks repeating the mistakes it made in solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles: inventing breakthrough technologies while ceding profits and geopolitical leverage to China, this time with even greater consequences.

The microbe revolution

For two centuries, the molecules that underpin modern life have been pumped from the ground in the form of oil and gas. The next industrial revolution may instead grow them in laboratories and tanks.

This is the promise of biomanufacturing: using biological processes to produce the building blocks of the future economy. Scientists can programme living cells to act like microscopic factories, capable of producing everything from food, fuels and fertilisers to plastic, chemicals and advanced materials­—nearly all of which still rely to some degree on fossil resources. For millennia microbes were used to turn grain into beer and milk into cheese. Now they are engineered to turn straw into jet fuel and sugar into armour.

What sounds like science fiction is rapidly becoming reality. Driven by abundant and affordable renewable energy and dramatic advances in artificial intelligence (AI), biomanufacturing is beginning to change not only what economies produce, but how they produce it. In doing so, they address a deeper layer of fossil dependence than renewable electricity alone. The shift could be as transformative as the invention of the petrochemical industry itself. If the geographical distribution of fossil resources shaped the geopolitics of the last industrial age, then the ability to produce key molecules without them could shape the next.

China’s leaders have recognised this opportunity. Beijing has spent an average of roughly €1.4bn per year on electric vehicle research and development (R&D) over 15 years to build a globally dominant industry. It is now reportedly spending €2bn-3bn in biotechnology R&D alone. And it is doing this at a time when China already accounts for more than 70% of global basic fermentation capacity.

But its ambitions for the bioeconomy go much further. The 2022 Bioeconomy Five-Year Plan set a goal of global leadership by 2035, while the 2026 15th Five-Year Plan places biomanufacturing alongside AI at the heart of China’s future industrial model. In July 2025, Beijing unveiled a list of 35 flagship biomanufacturing products to replace fossil-based chemicals or food and feed additives, and selected 43 companies to build pilot plants. No other major power is investing in the bioeconomy with comparable scale or strategic intent.

But Europe has not lost the race to China just yet. As in areas like semi-conductors, European companies provide some of the key foundational technology and microbial strains that make Chinese fermentation successes possible. Europeans are at the cutting-edge of research—the continent has a thriving biosolutions sector worth €60bn, comparable to the GDP of Slovenia, and growing around 5% annually. And according to industry estimates, if scaled successfully, biomanufacturing could replace a quarter of European oil-based chemicals, halve the continent’s protein imports, drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions and create 700,000 additional jobs—by as soon as 2030.

Yet beneath these strengths lie familiar vulnerabilities. European firms already depend on Chinese producers for basic parts of the existing biomanufacturing value chain. As China scales its fermentation capacity, European start-ups are increasingly tempted to manufacture and scale there, exposing valuable intellectual property to a fierce competitor. In a 2025 report to Congress, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission likened fermentation capacity to that of chip factories, warning that China’s dominance could become a strategic chokepoint. Policymakers are already losing sleep over China’s massive share of global rare-earth refining. But biomanufacturing could prove even more consequential. Imagine similar leverage extending across all future food, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and energy inputs.

Europe’s lack of urgency is worrying. Policymakers still seem to treat biomanufacturing as a niche sustainability issue rather than a foundational technology layer capable of reshaping whole economies. If Europe fails to adjust course soon, it risks sleepwalking into an old pattern: pioneering innovation, creating demand through regulation and then watching production, profits and geopolitical leverage migrate to China.

This paper argues that European policymakers should view biomanufacturing not simply as another industrial sector but as a strategic foundational technology layer. They should see China’s push for leadership in this field as a geopolitical challenge as much as an economic one. The EU needs policies and investments that amplify its significant advantages in research and innovation before they are eroded by China’s scale and industrial capacity. As with solar panels and batteries before it, Europe risks inventing the future only to surrender its strategic power—but this time with far greater consequences.

Biotechnology, biosolutions, biomanufacturing

The terminology surrounding the sector can be confusing. Biotechnology is the broadest catch-all description. In Europe, the term biosolutions is sometimes used to distinguish industrial applications of biotechnology from the pharmaceutical sector, although the boundary between the two is not always clear.

The distinction matters because the pharmaceutical sector follows a very different commercial logic. Biopharmaceutical companies develop low-volume and high-value products, such as specialised cancer treatment, where expensive R&D can be justified by potentially high returns—“consumers”, after all, are willing to pay steep prices for lifesaving or life-enhancing drugs.

By contrast, biosolutions often focus on replacing existing products (fertilisers or fuels). They create an alternative with environmental advantages (animal-free dairy) or inventing entirely new materials with specific qualities (spider-silk fabric) and wide industrial appeal. Unlike pharmaceuticals, these products must compete directly with established products or industries in low-margin markets often dominated by powerful incumbents.

China prefers the term biomanufacturing to describe the industrial applications of biotechnology. This reflects a focus on the process and a view that the technology is not simply the industrial application of biotechnology but the foundation of a new manufacturing model. As the world’s largest manufacturing power, China has already made it clear that it intends to dominate this next stage of industrial development. This policy brief adopts the same terminology to reflect that strategic perspective.

In the end, semantics matter less than the underlying shift. Whether described as biosolutions or biomanufacturing, the underlying transformation extends far beyond a collection of new products. It is a crucial layer of the emerging industrial economy, enabled by electrification and artificial intelligence.

The five pillars of biomanufacturing

Like the petrochemical industry before it, biomanufacturing at scale needs an industrial infrastructure.

Precision fermentation, one of the most promising techniques of the sector, uses genetically engineered microorganisms to produce specific target molecules. These organisms are cultivated in fermentation tanks and supplied with sugar-based feedstocks. The produced molecule is then extracted and purified. It could be a dairy protein made without a cow, a polymer with all the qualities of traditional plastic but none of the fossil-based input, or a protein that mimics spider silk, creating fibres strong enough to be used for body armour.

The science behind all this has been around for a while, but the combination of advances in AI and the renewable energy boom are making some of the existing solutions commercially attractive, while allowing the more cutting-edge innovation to scale from the lab to industrial production faster. Microorganisms are fickle—they are alive and evolving after all—but AI can make working with them more predictable. Success requires the availability of physical infrastructure (large tanks as one would know them from wine production, for example), access to cheap energy, reliable feedstock supply and significant investment before profits can materialise. AI specifically has accelerated the lengthy cycles of designing, prototyping and testing, changing the whole biomanufacturing equation.

China’s advantage is not due to a single scientific breakthrough or one national champion, but because it has positioned itself incredibly well across the five pillars of biomanufacturing and morphed them into a mutually reinforcing ecosystem: patient capital, industrial infrastructure, cheap energy, feedstock access and cost-competitive AI capabilities. Europe will need to accelerate on all of these fronts if it wants to compete.

Capital

Advanced fermentation-derived products still often cost two to three times more than petrochemical alternatives. Many are entering markets where they must either displace a product or create entirely new categories of demand.

This is precisely the sort of problem that China’s state-capitalist system is well suited to solve. Having identified biomanufacturing as a way to build new industries and upgrade existing ones, Chinese leaders are willing to support nascent companies through years of low returns and uncertain future profitability. Abundant patient capital allows Chinese companies, particularly small and medium-sized ones, to experiment, fail, refine and scale.

In Europe, industry groups consider the investment gap and lack of a coherent enabling framework one of the key weaknesses. This includes clear government signalling through consistent regulation. In a December 2025 report, the OECD argued that policymakers are falling to make full use of powerful tools to bring in private investment for the sector, including blended finance, de-risking mechanisms, market-based instruments and public-private partnership frameworks.

Infrastructure

China recognised the need for infrastructure very early. The 13th Five-Year Plan of 2016, for example, called for the development of fermentation products such as amino acids and vitamins, and China has since become the world’s largest producer of these products. They may seem mundane commodities, but the underlying infrastructure is relevant to more advanced applications.

Producing next generation proteins or biochemicals shares many industrial needs with vitamin production, despite the differences in the processes. Fermentation facilities, engineering expertise, supply chains and operational know-how can be decisive advantages in mastering the breakthrough on more advanced products.

However, Chinese producers still depend heavily on imported microbial strains—much like many AI developers rely on foundational models created elsewhere, but then fine-tune them for more specific applications. Denmark’s Novonesis, for example, is one of the world’s leading producers of microbial strains. Yet China is accumulating experience in large-scale fermentation using these strains, and it is advancing fast in building infrastructure needed for testing and scaling. Developing its own foundational strains is the next logical step of its industrial strategy.

Besides, manufacturing itself creates its own chokepoints. As fermentation capacity concentrates in China, innovators elsewhere may increasingly depend on Chinese infrastructure to bring products to market. Similar dynamics have already emerged in batteries and other clean technologies, where manufacturing ecosystems and testing facilities had to rely on infrastructure overseas.[1] As China’s lead grows, private capital in the rest of the world will be less attracted to building competing facilities because they will struggle to match its scale and costs. The result is not only supply-chain dependence, but the risk that valuable know-how migrate with it.

Europeans are not alone in their growing discomfort with this dynamic. The solution is to push for investment in infrastructure in Europe and in a range of partner countries. India, for example, has a strong industrial base in the pharmaceutical sector and low construction costs, making it well-placed to expand fermentation capacity quickly.

For decades, China’s leadership has invested in sectors it considers crucial for national power. Made in China 2025, the industrial masterplan that produced its massive dominance in automotive, robotics and energy technology, was designed as much to boost competitiveness as it was to build resilience and security. Biomanufacturing should be seen in the same way: a strategic capability that can strengthen food and energy security while reducing dependence on fossil imports.

Energy

Fermentation is energy-intensive and, outside pharmaceuticals, price margins for biomanufactured products will likely be slim. Electricity costs are thus a critical determinant of commercial viability. China’s industrial electricity prices are among the lowest in the world, below even those in emerging economies such as India or Mexico—and dramatically lower than in Europe, where energy prices shot up after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other geopolitical crises. A massive expansion of renewable energy, continued investment in nuclear and domestic coal, significant state control over pricing, plus regional pricing policies to encourage industries to set up in certain provinces mean that Chinese industry pays roughly 50% of the global average for its electric power.

For China, the green transition is not a hindrance to industrial competitiveness, but the vehicle towards it. Its leaders are driving an ambitious electrification agenda with the declared goal of fully replacing fossil fuels with renewables in the next decades. And the cheaper and cleaner China’s electricity becomes, the more competitive its biomanufacturing industry will be.

Feedstock

Feedstock represents another potential bottleneck. Sugars, grain, agricultural residues and other biological sources of carbon are, according to a recent report, responsible for up to 60% of total production cost.

As in any industry where margins are thin, access to cheap inputs matters significantly for market viability. Transporting large volumes of cheap biomass adds costs, making local supply a competitive advantage. The economics will also create incentives for recycling, reusage and carbon capture, all of which could become more viable as infrastructure for collection and processing expands. Regions that can grow biological feedstock, especially under conditions of rising temperatures, will become attractive partners. But quantity is only half of the equation: equally important will be improving yields and engineering crops better suited for industrial use.

According to one observer, no one has yet fully mastered the feedstock question. But China is positioning itself well. Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, longstanding scepticism towards genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has given way to a more pragmatic approach in favour of domestic innovation and food security. The takeover of European seed and agricultural technology giant Syngenta by state-owned ChemChina in 2017 was emblematic of this shift.

In the emerging bioeconomy, carbon will remain the essential raw material. The difference is that it will increasingly come from renewable, highly available and fully circular sources.

Artificial intelligence

The final pillar of the sector may prove the most important.

AI is beginning to transform biomanufacturing from end to end. By enabling products and production processes to be designed and tested digitally first, it can dramatically accelerate development cycles and reduce the number of costly physical experiments.

Industry leaders argue that the interactions between the production process and AI will become increasingly important. Better data analysis and digital modelling will improve production, while sensors embedded in the industrial process will generate the data needed to improve the AI models in a continued feedback loop. As biology can be fickle, and microbes are living organisms that can evolve during production, achieving consistent results is a challenge. Richer data makes production more predictable and commercially viable. This is why the increasing availability and the falling costs of AI computing and model inference are a game changer for biomanufacturing.

The Chinese leadership is prioritising the industrial use and of AI and is actively encouraging companies to integrate AI and manufacturing. In 2025, for example, the government released a list of 16 typical application cases for AI in biomanufacturing. Chinese AI models are also cheaper, driving uptake in sectors where margins are thin and where start-ups rely on limited funding, both in China and abroad. As analysts Dirk van der Kley and Tom Campbell have argued, China’s emerging lead in biomanufacturing thus does not lie in a single layer of the value chain or the production process, but in its ability to combine these pillars into an ecosystem that increasingly blurs the line between the digital and the physical world.

New materials, new food, new energy

Making things

The application of biomanufacturing extends well beyond replacing fossil-based inputs. It is increasingly focused on creating entirely new materials for new technologies.

Alongside textile and construction, the defence sector has become particularly interested in these products. NATO elevated biotech to a strategic priority with its first dedicated strategy in 2024 and now channels over €500m annually to 28 dual-use startups via the DIANA programme. Although still at the R&D stage, European researchers are developing new bio-based materials with specific defence capabilities, such as armour, drones and rare-earth substitutes.

Here Europe retains an important edge. While Chinese companies dominate production volumes in traditional industries such as textiles or bio-based plastics. Such plastics include PHB—a bio-polymer that can be used in the medical sector for sutures or in the food sector as bio-degradable packaging; it is already being produced at scale in China while in Europe it has barely achieved market entry. European companies lead in several advanced biomaterials for aerospace, defence and other high-performance applications. Germany’s AMSilk, for example, is the world’s first industrial-scale producer of spider silk proteins and is working with Airbus on lightweight aerospace composites and with Evonik for industrial-scale fermentation supply. In 2024, it partnered with Denmark’s 21st.BIO to scale its protein production. Dutch firm Avantium, backed by both EU and private investment, has begun commercial-scale production of PEF, a fully recyclable bio-based alternative to fossil-based PET plastic.

As in other advanced industries, China increasingly leads on scale while Europe remains strong in specialised innovation.

Making food

The food sector is one of the most promising areas for biomanufacturing. In fact, one of the most consequential biotechnology breakthroughs in agriculture passed largely unnoticed by consumers. Fermentation-produced chymosin (FPC), the enzyme used to make cheese, replaced animal rennet taken from a cow’s stomach. It became widespread in the 1990s and today accounts for 80–90% of all commercial cheese production globally. Now, similar technologies are spreading across proteins, fertilisers and crop production.

Microbial biofertilisers can reduce the need for synthetic fertilisers by 20-40% while improving crop yields. Gene-edited crops can be designed to adapt to different nitrogen levels in soil. Precision fermentation allows microbes to produce dairy or egg proteins without animals. Biomass fermentation can grow fungi directly into a protein source. Because these systems depend less on land, climate and livestock, they offer a degree of resilience that conventional food production cannot match.

This matters particularly for China. Protein security remains one of the weakest links in China’s quest for autonomy.  The country must feed 19% of the world’s population with only 8% of its arable land, while still importing much of the energy needed to power its economy. As Xi Jinping has repeatedly said, “China must keep its rice bowls firmly” in its own hands. Yet rising incomes have transformed diets, increasing demand for animal protein and imported feed. Food self-sufficiency has dropped from 94% to 66% between 2000 and 2020, while in 2025 soybean imports hit a record 111.83m metric tonnes. By 2035, China could face a protein feed shortfall of 120m tonnes.

Reducing this vulnerability has become therefore a matter of national security. Beijing is pursuing a range of solutions, such as improving crop yields and climate resilience, developing ways to decouple the feed and food supply chains, and creating novel foods.

Europeans, on the other hand, rarely talk about protein security. Decades of subsidies and protection have created the impression of abundance of milk, butter, meat and grain, and Europe’s understanding of food poverty and famines has largely vanished. At the same time, agricultural lobbies continue to exert outsized influence in many EU member states, ensuring that agricultural exports remain a national priority. While exports of cars and advanced machinery struggles, European leaders returning from Beijing increasingly announce deals for oats (Sweden), pork (Spain), dairy and seafood (Ireland) and even chicken feet (Germany).

This is not just a European phenomenon. US president Donald Trump’s visit to China in April brought little clarity on semi-conductor sales, but agreements on soybeans and oil. The problem is that Beijing has little intention of remaining dependent on imported food. By the time Europeans realise this, it may already be too late.

Making fuel

Energy is the third frontier. Biomanufacturing can use engineered microorganisms or synthetic enzymes to convert organic matter into fuels that can replace or complement fossil fuels. The appeal is both environmental and strategic.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has yet again demonstrated the vulnerability of global fuel supply chains and its implications for shipping, commercial flying and military mobility.  Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is a renewable, non-fossil alternative to conventional jet kerosene. Produced from renewable and waste-based raw materials, it can be safely blended up to 50% with conventional jet fuel (because it is chemically almost identical to it), requiring no modifications in existing aircraft or airport infrastructure. It is produced from renewable and waste-based raw materials rather than fossil fuels, cutting lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80%. In a major conflict, air forces account for 85% of total military fuel consumption. Recognising this, the UK Ministry of Defence announced that all aviation fuel procured from January 2025 will include SAF.

China sees similar opportunities in global shipbuilding and port equipment. As the global shipping industry moves towards decarbonisation, Chinese firms are seeking to establish an early need. China is the world’s largest shipbuilder, controlling 55% of global output and 75% of new orders. Now the country has launched sea trials for the world’s largest methanol dual‑fuel container ship (designed and built by Nantong COSCO KHI) and is also building the world’s first deep‑sea bulk carriers with ethanol-powered main engines. These technologies allow Chinese shipyards and equipment makers to shape emerging standards and capture the market for biofuel‑ready ships.

The logic mirrors Beijing’s broader strategy: make China less dependent on the world while making the world more dependent on China. As alternative fuels become increasingly integrated in shipping, countries that control both the fuels and the infrastructure that use them will enjoy an advantage. Without investment, European companies such as Maersk or Hapag-Lloyd will have a hard time competing in this sector without embedding themselves into the Chinese supply chain, and risk becoming reliant on Chinese suppliers in yet another strategic industry.

Why Europe can still lead on biomanufacturing

Unlike on solar panels, batteries and EVs, Europe is not playing catch up on biomanufacturing. Europe has world-class research, vast industrial potential and a strong market. But the window to assert itself as a leader is closing fast.

Europe has the market

Europe holds twice the precision fermentation capacity of the US: 479 demonstration, semi-industrial, and pilot plants; 2,362 additional biorefineries, spanning pharmaceuticals, food, chemicals, and industrial biotechnology. With the right support, alternative proteins alone could contribute €111bn in annual gross value added to the EU economy by 2040­­—comparable to the size of Europe’s entire wine sector and could build a €60 billion export market, comparable to current EU exports to South Korea.

The bloc also has the infrastructure to scale. Although the EU faces a plant protein deficit of nearly 19m tonnes (largely for livestock feed), it holds 47% of global protein and enzyme fermentation capacity for industrial applications. Meanwhile, Europe’s biofuel market exceeded $43.7bn in 2025 and is expected to grow at 9.4% annually in the coming decade. The dependence on imported carbon to power should focus the minds of policymakers on using non-food feedstock (agricultural and forestry residue, waste and algae) and scaling the market to make these products competitive faster.

Perhaps most importantly, the EU is creating demand through regulation. By 2030, EU member states are required to achieve either a 29% share of renewable energy in transport or reduce transport fuel emissions intensity by 14.5%. SAF represented just 0.6% of all aviation fuel in EU airports in 2024 but is required to rise steadily to 70% by 2050. The FuelEU Maritime Regulation aims for a 6% reduction of emissions in 2030 and up to 80% by 2050.

The challenge is to ensure that European firms rather than foreign competitors capture the resulting market opportunities. Today, 69% of feedstocks used for production of SAF used in the EU originated outside the bloc, with China supplying 38% and Malaysia 12%. Europe risks creating demand at home while becoming dependent on foreign imports.

Europe has the conditions

Europe enjoys structural advantages over China as it has abundant, low-cost biomass availability in relation to population size. Denmark benefits from plentiful agricultural waste from sugar beet production, while Germany can use forestry residues and Italy its cereal or wine residues. South-eastern Europe combines renewable energy potential with availability of olive and wine by-products. Bulgaria, for example, could make use of its potent agricultural base to become a hub for large-scale fermentation, using its solar resources to power this infrastructure instead of relying solely on its booming battery storage sector, which largely relies on Chinese battery imports.

Europe also has an often-overlooked advantage: skills. Biotechnology requires not only trained manufacturing professionals but also researchers, scientists and AI experts. In Denmark, a large share of the industrial workforce receives vocational training tailored to biotech manufacturing, including precision fermentation and bioreactor management. Europe’s tradition of apprenticeships and technical education is well placed to adapt. But timing matters. The foundations of industrial leadership in the next decades will be laid over in the next few years.

Europe has the know-how

By combining strong fermentation infrastructure with supportive policies, Denmark has built one of the world’s most advanced biomanufacturing ecosystems, where pharmaceutical, agricultural and chemical firms share industrial waste with one another.

Denmark’s industrial base is also closely linked to agriculture. About 20% of Danish land is organically farmed, while companies like Novonesis produce microbial inoculants that boost crop yields by 3-7% while cutting fertiliser use. Instead of treating biotechnology as a threat to agriculture, Denmark positioned the sector as a tool to make farming more productive and sustainable. This contrasts with many other European countries in which the agricultural lobby continues to push back against genetically modified crops and alternative proteins.

Denmark also shows that the EU’s regulatory hurdles are not inevitable. EvodiaBio moved from laboratory to profitable industrial production in only three and a half years, a remarkable achievement in a region where biotechnology approvals are notoriously slow. Across the EU, novel food authorisations average 2.5 years and can take as long as six; GMO crop approvals take up to six years compared with less than two in America; biopesticide approvals average seven to nine years.

Germany is Europe’s second biotech powerhouse. Companies such as Sartorius, or the pharma companies BioNTech and Merck KGaA hold roughly 25% of EU precision fermentation capacity for low-carbon chemicals. Formo leads in fermentation-derived proteins, while Bayer and BASF are advancing biopesticides and other crop protection agents.

Switzerland dominates contract development and manufacturing organisations (CDMOs) globally, led by companies such as Lonza and Roche. These firms own and operate the specialised infrastructure required to produce biological products at scale. While biosoutions companies own the intellectual property, CDMOs provide the fermentation tanks, the purifiers, and the manufacturing capacity.

The Netherlands is Europe’s leading hub for cultivated meat and precision fermentation, with DSM-Firmenich and Avantium excelling in biomass conversion.

France also has a robust agricultural biomanufacturing industry, with companies like Standing Ovation and Valley in alternative proteins, and De Sangosse (€315m) in biopesticides. Meanwhile, Italy ranks third in the EU by organic farmland area. Firms such as Rovensa Next lead in biostimulants and biocontrol, products that improve crop health while reducing dependence on conventional synthetic chemicals. Finland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are also leading EU SAF producers, with commercial-scale output already under way—Neste in Finland, TotalEnergies in France, BP in Germany, Repsol in Spain, and Eni in Italy.

How Europe can lead on biomanufacturing

Define the vision

What is holding Europe back is not a lack of capital, talent or technology. It is a lack of ambition, sense of urgency and confidence.

China’s leadership has already articulated its vision. The 15th Five-Year Plan leaves little doubt that Beijing sees biomanufacturing as a pillar of its future economy and is aligning industrial policy, infrastructure, regulation and investment accordingly. European policy makers should pay close attention and decide whether they want to compete or simply adapt to a world of Chinese biomanufacturing dominance, with all the consequences of dependence, deindustrialisation and decline.

If they want to compete, the first step is to move biomanufacturing out of the “green niche” category and recognise it as a strategic component of a post-fossil, highly electrified global economy. Biomanufacturing should not be treated as a sectoral issue but as part of a broader vision for Europe’s future prosperity, competitiveness and security—a holistic push for infrastructure, science, education, regulation and market entry conditions is needed.

This requires political leadership. Key decision-makers, not just technical experts, need to understand the sector’s potential. Policymakers do not need to become fermentation experts any more than they needed to become semiconductor specialists. But they need to become as comfortable discussing microbes and enzymes as they now are rare earths and chips.

European leaders should make the case for biomanufacturing in terms of jobs, growth and innovation as well as harnessing the potential of European frontrunners. The narrative should be less about environmental virtue and more about hard economic reality. The debate must move beyond technicalities around the forthcoming Biotech Act II and become part of a broader conversation about Europe’s future. The China factor can help make this case. The Chinese leadership is not investing billions into a niche sustainability sector. It is investing in what it believes will be the foundational layer of a new industrial order.

Involve the existing industry

European policymakers should bring together representatives from the chemical sector, the manufacturing industry, defence companies and trade unions. Europe’s chemical and machinery industries in particular are under massive pressure from Chinese competition and are looking for new sources of growth. Biomanufacturing offers one. The experience of chemical firms, many of which conduct bio-based research, will be crucial for scaling. The manufacturing sector will be critical in building the new industrial infrastructure. And unions should be involved from the outset to ensure broad societal buy-in for the transformation process.

Defence could become an important catalyst. Europe is currently investing billions in rearming. Even a fraction of that spending directed to biomanufacturing-related R&D could generate a massive innovation push. Applications already under way include biosensors and microbial technologies that detect chemical or biological toxins, which can support clean-up operations in conflict regions. New systems designed to identify chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats are expected to reach important milestones before the end of 2026.

New European legislation must also facilitate the integration of biotechnology innovations into civil-military supply chains. A recent ECFR event organised with Dank Industri underscored opportunities ranging from bio-based concrete for reconstruction to drones and medical supplies. In China, this integration of civil and military supply chains is part of its success story which Europe can take note of and replicate at a time of vast defence spending. Framing industrial renewal as defence could even help increase support for defence spending in more reluctant countries. Spain for example has a huge potential for becoming a biomanufacturing champion due to abundant renewable energy and proximity to agricultural feedstocks.

Build coalitions with allies

Besides building internal coalitions, Europe also needs its external partners if it is to succeed in a biomanufacturing revolution.

A grand bargain with Britain

Britain remains a world leader in life sciences and research but faces challenges in scaling. An ambitious EU-UK biomanufacturing partnership could combine European market scale and British scientific strength. Joint infrastructure projects, coordinated funding, university cooperation schemes, student exchanges and shared regulatory sandboxes would all help competitiveness. The UK’s higher appetite for risk-taking in areas such as cultivated products offers valuable lessons for Europe.

An economic security agenda with Japan

Japan’s biomanufacturing sector is smaller than China’s but highly mature and deeply embedded in agricultural, food and chemical supply chains. Patent activity has been consistently high in synthetic and engineering biology but remains dominated by large corporations and public research institutes. Public agencies and private investors support early-stage funding but Japanese companies lack the necessary infrastructure to grow, such as fermentation facilities. But Japan’s manufacturers are also deeply embedded in Asia-Pacific supply chains, making the country a potential hub rather than a standalone actor. Biomanufacturing should become a dedicated pillar in all EU-Japan exchanges, not just from a business but also from an economic security perspective. Japan’s concerns with Chinese coercion closely mirrors Europe’s own.

A dedicated Trade and Technology Council track for India

India has both the potential and the ambition to become an important actor in biotech. It combines a strong pharmaceutical industry with growing renewable energy capacity, while alsoplanning to expand manufacturing. Investments in biomanufacturing have been significant and its regulatory approval processes are much faster than Europe’s, a huge advantage in a fast-moving sector. The recently concluded EU-India Free Trade Agreement provides an opportunity for joint projects and technology exchanges. Biomanufacturing should become a priority track of the regular EU-India Trade and Technology Council, sounding out options for joint research and investment.

Speed up the action

The 2025 EU Bioeconomy Strategy sets out an ambition vision for bioplastics and biobased packaging, textiles, chemicals, construction products and fertiliser. The commission aims to launch the Bio-based Europe Alliance to address gaps across the value chain that prevent companies from scaling up at the Global Bioeconomy Summit in Ireland in September 2026. The forthcoming Biotech Act II is expected to address regulatory hurdles and streamline access to European funding. The proposed European Competitiveness Fund could support biobased materials, biomanufacturing and innovative food products and biochemicals. On paper, momentum is building.

The question is whether biomanufacturing will be treated as a standalone sector or become an integral part of European industrial policy. The upcoming Industrial Accelerator Act mentions bio-based solutions only in passing, an omission that should be fixed during negotiations with the European Parliament.

Industry concerns[1] remain strikingly consistent: speed of permitting, over-regulation and lack of access to capital. Shell lost $600m in investments when it cancelled a SAF plant in the Netherlands in 2025, illustrating the risk that continues to deter private capital despite legislative demand signals. To unlock their own markets, governments will need to reduce those risks by providing guarantees, offtake agreements and funding from EU vehicles, such as the new European Competitiveness Fund.

Faster permitting, investment and regulatory simplification must go hand in hand with broader competitiveness policies and responses to Chinese overcapacity. China’s success stems not only from the scale of its investments but from its ability to integrate policy, infrastructure and strategic objectives.

That may be the most important lesson for Europe. If the continent wants to defend its market, preserve its innovation power and defend its manufacturing future, it cannot afford to let its biotechnology assets slip away.

[1] Interviews with biomanufacturing industry representatives between May 2025 and May 2026 in Copenhagen, Brussels, Berlin from a range of European countries.

The race is still open

China’s challenge to Europe’s traditional industries does not stop at cars and solar panels. As the rise of biomanufacturing shows, the competition now extends to the future of industrial production itself. The technologies discussed in this paper are still emerging but the foundations of industrial leadership are already being laid.

China’s leadership understands this. Through a combination of industrial policy, regulatory framework, state-backed capital, and the creative and entrepreneurial force of its companies, Beijing is positioning itself to shape the next industrial revolution.

Europe should take that ambition very seriously. The continent has the talent, the money, the sophisticated industrial clusters, and the network of international partners. It has the ingredients required to build a successful biomanufacturing ecosystem and to emerge as an additional pole in a world increasingly defined by technological rivalry.

Europe has a fair chance to accomplish this. To do so, policymakers in member states and in Brussels must look beyond protecting the incumbents and relieve the regulatory burden, and instead build the conditions for new industries to thrive. Bringing in private capital through the European Competitiveness Fund, the Industrial Accelerator Act, the Biotech Act II and the next EU budget will be key.

Biomanufacturing is not simply another climate technology—it is a new way of producing food, materials, chemicals and energy, driven by advances in biology, data, renewables and AI. The countries that master these technologies will define the rules of the future economy, the ones who do not even try will remain stuck in the industries of the past. 

[1] Interviews with industry representatives from the batteries sector in March and May 2036 in various European locations and during the DARE* batteries taskforce meetings.

About the authors

Janka Oertel is a distinguished policy fellow with the European Power programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. She leads the DARE* project, a three-year initiative focused on European competitiveness and clean technology transition.

Nina Schmelzer is a research assistant for the DARE* initiative at the European Council on Foreign Relations, based in Berlin. She supports a wide range of activities related to Europe’s industrial competitiveness, clean technology leadership and security within the context of global geopolitical and economic shifts.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Cam Watson, Dirk van der Kley and Nicolas Krink for their fantastic comments to this text and leading intellectual contribution to the overall research landscape; Sofie Carsten Nielsen of Dansk Industri and Emmanuel Molding Nielsen of Think Tank Europa for their support in deepening our understanding of the industry and connecting us to key companies; and Massimo Portincaso from Arsenale Bioyards for providing valuable insights into an entrepreneur’s approach to biomanufacturing and his conceptual framing of “neo-industrial”. Taisa Sganzerla did an outstanding job editing this unusually technical publication and added valuable insights and framing. And yet again, Sonia Li has provided invaluable support on research and conceptualisation. The publication is part of the DARE* initiative. All mistakes remain solely the authors’ responsibility.

Source

Opponents of the rapid buildout of data centers held 142 protests across 42 states on Saturday in the first nationwide effort to channel anger at the AI infrastructure expansion that has ramped up over the past year and roiled local politics.

The protests were coordinated by HumansFirst, co-founded by a former leader of the modern-day Tea Party. She compares growing opposition to data centers to the right-wing populist movement that emerged in 2009 to protest what it saw as excessive taxation and government overreach.

Protesters rallied against what HumansFirst calls the “unaccountable” buildout of data centers and “unacceptable infringement on our liberty.”

In Fredericksburg, Virginia, one young man carried a sign reading, “We thrive on water not data.” In Atlanta, a small knot of protesters wielded signs reading, “Georgia never voted for hyperscale AI data centers.”

Nationwide and city-specific counts of protesters were not immediately available, said Chris Barron, president at Right Turn Strategies, who is handling press relations for HumansFirst.

Attendance was lower than expected in some rural areas and major cities such as Atlanta, local organizers told Reuters. But HumansFirst praised the efforts of community activists. “We were thrilled with the turnout,” Barron said.

Data center opposition is among the few issues uniting Americans across ideological lines, with just a third of Americans approving of the pace of data center construction in the U.S., according to a June Reuters/Ipsos poll. Only 14% of respondents would support a data center being built in their community to support artificial intelligence projects for technology firms such as Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Elon Musk’s xAI.

“The data center industry is continuing to work with policymakers, stakeholders, and residents to ensure data centers strengthen, not strain, the areas where they operate — while mitigating any negative impacts to households and businesses,” said Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, the industry’s association and lobbying group.

RED AND BLUE STATES REPRESENTED

Although HumansFirst co-founder Amy Kremer compared her current efforts to the Tea Party movement’s early days in 2009, she said the anger against data centers is nonpartisan.

“They just woke up one day and found out they’re going to have this monstrosity in their community, and they don’t want it,” said Kremer, who predicted data centers will be a defining issue in November’s midterm elections and the 2028 presidential race.

Kremer has criticized Republicans for giving Big Tech a “free pass,” but she and some organizers also said they do not support policies like moratoriums on data center approvals like the one adopted by the Democratic state of New York.

Demands made by organizers from the groups involved include transparency in the development process, protection of resources and environmental health, community benefits such as the creation of well-paying union jobs, and a way to hold developers accountable if they break their promises.

The Republican stronghold of Texas, a hotspot for data center development, hosted 18 protest events, the most of any state. The battleground state of Georgia had 11 rallies. Democratic-dominated California had eight, while the swing state of Pennsylvania and the Republican-leaning states of Florida and Indiana came in at seven each.

Saturday’s Atlanta protest, one of a number of similar actions this month, attracted about a dozen participants who traveled from smaller Georgia towns where the largest data centers are being built, said Jake Watts, 26, a volunteer at that event.

Left-leaning Ivan DelSol, 54, helped lead a protest in the California desert’s Imperial County, where a proposed data center project could use 260 million gallons (984 million liters) of water per year from the Colorado River.

“It’s dystopian that you would use this much fresh water for AI,” said DelSol, who later added around 50 people attended despite temperatures that soared above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius).

Although water is frequently cited as a top public concern, especially in water-stressed regions, the data center industry says its water use is not as significant as other industries.

In Tyler, Texas, first-time activist and self-described “political nomad” Eva Cardona, 31, organized a protest that also drew about a dozen people.

“I’ve been hearing about unregulated AI and the rapid growth was alarming me. I wanted to do something more hands-on than just your standard Facebook post,” Cardona said.

Read full story here…

After kilometers of flat, orange desert, the bus dives down through an increasingly lunar landscape as it reaches San Pedro de Atacama. Amidst the sea of red rocks, patchy vegetation and distant high plains known as altiplanos, a small sign appears on the side of the road. The entry marker has been tagged in graffiti. “Se vendió los salares.” “They sold the salt flats.” 

The town of San Pedro, located in the north of Chile not far from the borders with Argentina and Bolivia, then appears like an oasis. In this hub for international tourism, small buses packed with visitors make trips from the dusty, bustling center to explore the region’s various geysers, sand dunes and volcanoes. Night sky tourism ventures offer a unique look at the southern stars. But it is the vast white salt flats, formed between 100 and 10 million years ago, that people come from around the world to see. 

As tectonic plates slowly shifted, water flowing from the Andes mountains lost access to the sea and settled into a natural drainage area known as an endorheic basin. Here, water evaporated quickly, leaving a white crust of salt on top and below, a rich mélange of minerals – lithium, potassium, magnesium, and boron — encased in brine. The Salar de Atacama is one of the biggest salt flats in the world — and one of the most important.

On March 11, Jose Antonio Kast, Chile’s new president took office. Kast, a conservative ostentatiously close to Donald Trump, has long been a critic of Chile’s national lithium strategy. One of his first actions as president was to sign an exploratory deal with the United States to extract rare earths and essential mirals. Chile, the world’s largest producer of copper and second largest of lithium, is central to the Trump administration’s plans to reduce its reliance on China as a source of the rare earths and metals that are fundamental to modern industry, from semiconductors to electric vehicles to batteries to defense technology.

Even before Kast took office, he attended Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” summit in Miami, an ostensibly security-related alliance that is also an attempt led by the U.S. to curb China’s growing influence in Latin America. Under the previous Chilean government, China had become a dominant player in the national lithium industry, as it had in Argentina. With Javier Milei, a Trump ally, in office in Buenos Aires, having another ally ensconced in Santiago has been a significant boost to U.S. plans to reclaim its role as the overwhelming regional hegemon. It was intervention from Washington, for instance, that led to Chile abandoning a $500 million Chinese telecom deal to link the two countries via undersea fiber optic cables.

Amidst the geopolitical wrangling, though, is the question of who benefits from Chile’s national resources and what impact the relentless drive to extract those resources has on the country and its people.

Sonia Ramos Chocobar sweeps kibble from the small kitchen table of her home on the outskirts of San Pedro and shoos her five dogs and three cats into the yard. Chocobar has just returned home after several days in neighboring Calama – where she was attending the first-ever Salt Flats Conference – and the house is a mess. The climate activist has made time between her afternoon grocery shopping and an evening community gathering to meet with me. 

Chocobar, in her 70s, is a bit of a local legend. In 2009, she made national news when she and another environmental activist (Amelia Mamani, since deceased) silently walked from San Pedro to Santiago, a distance of 1,534 kilometers, to raise awareness about the environmental risks of geothermal exploration near a geyser known as El Tatio — sacred to the Lickanantay indigenous community she comes from. The “march of the grandmothers” was followed by other environmental actions. Most recently, Chocobar walked to Antofagasta, the gritty port town that exports much of the copper, lithium and other resources mined out of the vast expanses of land in what’s known as Chile’s Gran Norte (“Greater North”) region. 

This time her message was different: save the Atacama salt flats.

The broader area where the borders of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia converge is often referred to as the world’s “lithium triangle.” This lost corner of South America is believed to hold 68% of the world’s lithium reserves — a key element in the production of the lithium-ion batteries that fuel not only electric vehicles, but, increasingly, data centers and other large “green” infrastructure projects. San Pedro, roughly in the middle of the triangle, is sitting on a modern gold mine — and a faultline for the future of renewable energy.  

The town of 2,500 full-time residents has long been at the center of a tug-of-war between different actors, all of whom claim sovereignty – dominion – over the salt flats surrounding it: the indigenous communities who have called this environment home for centuries, the Chilean state and the international markets salivating over the “white gold” extracted from it. Over the years, and through much negotiation on local, national and international levels, a sort of entente had been reached: the state owns the resource, private companies exploit it and some of the profits kick back to local communities. Lithium was even granted a special status under a dictatorship-era decree: a “strategic” mineral, only to be mined with the express agreement of the State. The election of Kast has already disrupted this tenuous equilibrium. The Chilean president has removed environmental protections from roughly 40 different types of natural resources — reopening the tap that has long fueled extractivism and inequality in Chile after four years of left-wing, protectionist policies. 

With counter space cleared and the tape recorder set, Chocobar begins to speak, choosing her words carefully and pausing regularly for emphasis. She sounds tired, but steely. “We are always in a constant effort to protect our water, our land,” she tells me. “We have the misfortune of the Pacific. And we have the misfortune that the Salar de Atacama is one of the greatest lithium sources in the world.”

It wasn’t always this way — in fact, the “resource curse” is relatively new, she explains. For a long time, the Atacama desert was viewed by most Chileans as a no man’s land. Growing up as a member of the Lickanantay indigenous community — also known as the Atacameño people — Chocobar learned how to coexist with the harsh environment, rather than to dominate it. How to extract groundwater, which plants to grow, when and where to shuffle crops. “If we are millenary people, it is because we have found many ways to survive here,” she says. “People think the desert is lifeless, but it’s the exact opposite.” 

Over her many years, Chocobar has seen these techniques slowly disappear: dried-up streams, dying flora and fauna, water rerouted from communities to corporations. The natural richness of the desert lands she calls home has been converted into a monocrop for export. The culprit? The world’s increasingly rapacious appetite for rare earths and metals.

Lithium demands huge amounts of water. To extract the resource through a process called brine evaporation, mineral-rich groundwater is pumped from beneath the salt flats at a rate of thousands of liters per second into vast open-air ponds. Then, the water is evaporated to reveal the lithium. 95% of this groundwater — which once belonged to the smattering of 18 indigenous communities that inhabit the region — quite literally disappears into thin air. 

For local communities, the strain is already noticeable. In San Pedro, an estimated 49% of residents don’t have access to running water, says journalist Ernesto Picco. In one town — the ironically named Santiago del Rio Grande — Picco has reported, 100% of residents have no access to water. 

It's not only humans who are being affected. The water scarcity has modified the breeding and feeding habits of alpaca populations, a local llama herder in neighboring Toconao, Hugo Flores, told me. A river used to run through San Pedro. On one of my days in town, I climbed down a ladder and walked across the dried up stream to get a better view of the distant Licancabur Volcano. The caked ground chipped under my sandals.

“We’re sitting on a watershed, and yet there is water scarcity,” Chocobar explains. “We’re being conquered, in a sense — commercially, economically. It is a natural laboratory that is being destroyed.” 

Lithium hasn’t always been so coveted.

When it comes to minerals, in Chile, copper was for a long time — and still is, to a certain extent —king. Since its discovery in the 1880s, the South American country has been one of the world’s largest exporters of copper, which is drilled out of open pit mines in the Gran Norte region. From the window of a taxi in the port city of Antofagasta the day before, I had admired the massive telescopic loading chutes that transport the mineral directly into the hull of boats, releasing brown-gold particles into the air that settles on surfaces — park benches, balconies, cars — across the city.

It wasn't until the 1960s that the Chilean government began to recognize the benefits of lithium after accidentally discovering it buried in salt brine during an exploration aimed at identifying additional water sources for copper mining. The timing couldn’t have been better. “After World War II, there was a lot of speculative value in lithium as a nuclear material,” James J. A. Blair, a professor at Cal Poly Pomona who has published several papers on lithium mining in Chile, explained over a recent video call. 

In 1979, about six years into his 17-year iron reign and following the lead of the United States, which had done the same, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet declared lithium a “strategic resource” reserved exclusively for the state — not on account of its economic potential, which was at the time unknown, but as a national security stockpile. 

This seemingly small linguistic tweak has had long-lasting effects. 

After Pinochet’s decree, lithium extraction came under the auspices of Chile’s State Development Agency, CORFO, which started to ink contracts with private firms for further exploration. A year later, CORFO partnered with U.S.-based Foote Minerals to form the Chilean Lithium Company (SCL), in which the state held a 45% stake. 

What began as a Cold War precaution would quietly harden into one of the most unusual resource regimes in the world. By carving lithium out from the standard mining code, written in the 1930s, the Chilean state created a hybrid model. Lithium was not exactly nationalized, but neither was it fully privatized. “Lithium sits in a legal gray zone in Chile,” Blair told me. “It’s formally non-concessionable — meaning private actors can’t just stake a claim the way they would for copper — but in practice, the state has delegated extraction through long-term agreements that are incredibly favorable to a small number of firms.”

During the dictatorship’s wave of privatizations in the 1980s, control over key lithium assets was transferred to a small circle of politically connected actors. Among them: Julio Ponce Lerou, Pinochet’s son-in-law, who would go on to run SQM, now one of the world’s dominant lithium producers.

“Decisions were made in a highly centralized and opaque way,” researcher Gonzalo Gutiérrez told me over cafeteria food at the University of Chile, in Santiago. “By the time lithium became economically important, the institutional framework was already locked in.”

That framework has proven to be remarkably durable. Even as Chile transitioned back to democracy in the 1990s and expanded its role as a global mining powerhouse, lithium remained an exception — governed not through open concessions but through a handful of contracts administered by CORFO. 

In her 2025 book “Extraction,” researcher Thea Riofrancos notes that even today, two firms — SQM and Albemarle — effectively operate as a “a legally sanctioned private duopoly.” Control over lithium, she writes, is a tightrope between “the palpable potential of public control and the reality of corporate dominance.” 

For Ramón Balcázar, the founder of the San Pedro-based nonprofit, Fundacion Tantí, this legal exceptionalism has had profound consequences on the ground. “The state claims ownership, but the impacts are local,” he said. “Communities were never meaningfully included in the design of these contracts, yet they are the ones living with the depletion of water and the transformation of their ecosystems.”

Balcazar’s nonprofit sits on a side street in San Pedro, across from a trendy French bakery called La Franchuteria that sells iced lattes at European prices. 

Since its founding in 2016, Fundacion Tanti’s small team of researchers has studied the effects of lithium mining on indigenous communities in the Atacama desert. The period has coincided with nothing less than an explosion in the demand for Chilean lithium. 

The growth has mostly been tied to a dramatic rise in demand for electric vehicle batteries. Between 2015 and 2024, global lithium demand grew roughly sixfold, largely driven by EV batteries. The boom has fundamentally reshaped lithium markets: whereas EV batteries accounted for only about 15% of lithium demand in 2017, they made up roughly 85% by 2023. In Chile, arguably the world’s lithium breadbasket, raw materials are mined for export but rarely do its benefits trickle back down to communities.

“Where is the lithium going? To Elon Musk?” Daniela Rodriguez, a local journalist and activist I spoke with in San Pedro, asked. “To send rockets into space, to power electric cars that you never even see around here?” 

In 2021, Balcazar and fellow researchers came up with a neat term for this phenomenon: “green extractivism.” “What we are seeing is not an energy transition — it’s an expansion of the extractive frontier under a green label,” he told me. 

Faced with increasing demand for lithium to fuel the “green revolution,” the Chilean state has tried to thread the needle. In 2019, after a wave of mass protests against neoliberal inequality known as “el estallido social” (the social uprising), Chileans elected Gabriel Boric, a young, tattooed reformer who promised to, among other things, reassert state control over the lithium supply chain to redistribute its value. 

“Lithium is the mineral of the future,” Boric said on the campaign trail. “Chile can’t make the historic mistake of privatizing resources again.” His government promised a paradigm shift: more community involvement, more protection of wetlands, greener methods of extraction. Lithium, he seemed to say, would benefit Chileans across the whole supply chain and not just a select few at the top.

In April 2023, the government announced its National Lithium Strategy. The policy sought to expand production while increasing state control through public-private partnerships, renegotiate the contract with SQM (the same private company once headed by Pinochet’s son-in-law) and include community and indigenous participation in future lithium exploration decisions. 

In all, Boric’s government identified 68 salt flats that could be opened to mining exploration, but also 27 wetlands to be protected, Riofrancos, the author of “Extraction,” notes in her book. 

“The national lithium strategy is Boric's most successful policy,” Nicolas Grau, Boric’s former finance minister, told me over the phone. “It will allow Chile to industrialize through lithium — growing the economy while also protecting the environment.” After years of passive control, the state would finally take a more “protagonistic role” in managing the resource, Grau said, without nationalizing it.

To Riofrancos, the juggling act under Boric was typical of what happens when a state tries to pry some space in a market where extractivism has long been left unchecked. “Boric’s blueprint cited Allende as an inspiration, but his approach was more conciliatory toward extractive capital than anything Allende had proposed,” she writes. 

Local communities in San Pedro felt similarly. “The only thing politicians care about is being in power,” Chocobar said in San Pedro. “For all intents and purposes, we might as well not exist.” 

Boric’s successor, Kast has quickly rolled back environmental protections, fulfilling his campaign promises of commercializing mining and partnering with the U.S. regardless of the environmental impacts on the salt flats. 

Jorge Heine, a former Chilean diplomat and expert on international relations, argues that Kast is more constrained than it might appear. “People tend to overestimate how much a single administration can reshape lithium policy,” Heine explained. “This is a sector governed by long-term contracts, by international commitments, and by a legal framework that has proven remarkably resilient. Kast can tweak, accelerate, or slow things down, but dismantling the model entirely would come at a significant political and economic cost.”

But huge costs are already being paid, costs that communities in San Pedro have been living with for decades. Could Kast’s attempts to liberalize lithium mining and potentially exacerbate inequalities and environmental damage galvanize resistance?

For now, the signs of that resistance are still weak: graffiti scrawled on the side of the road, a grandmother walking along a highway with a cardboard sign, four panels of wood hung in a town square. But like lithium itself, transformations tend to take place very slowly at first — millennia of build-up in the brine — until suddenly they happen very fast. From Santiago to Atacama, protesters have been taking to the streets. In June, broader protests against Kast’s dismantling of social programs and services turned violent. 

At some point, austerity for the people contrasted with largesse for mining companies, technology companies and acquisitive foreign powers becomes hard for even a government elected in a landslide to defend.

Related Articles

The Trump corollary: Latin America swings right

Phineas Rueckert

China’s green energy miracle and a conspiracy of silence

Nithin Coca

How Italy’s Chernobyl ghosts might stop a new atomic age

Isobel Cockerell

The post The Chilean curse is its abundance of riches appeared first on Coda Story.