The bio-economy and biomanufacturing have traditionally been linked primarily to sustainability, circularity and climate policy. Now, attention is also shifting towards strategic autonomy, security of supply and Europe’s resilience. Biobased materials, industrial biotechnology and bio-manufacturing can play a prominent role in this. The report cites high-performance materials, chemical building blocks, coatings, textile fibres and fuels, among other things, as examples of technologies with a potential dual-use character.
The report is published at a time when dual-use is moving higher up the European policy agenda. Within Brussels, there is growing attention for technologies that have both economic and strategic value. Programmes within Horizon Europe and the European Innovation Council are also increasingly moving towards applications related to security, resilience and strategic industry.
Scaling up production capacity
BIC emphasises that this is not just about developing new materials or technologies, but also about building large-scale industrial production capacity within Europe itself. Europe’s dependence on critical raw materials, fossil fuel imports and foreign production chains is coming under increasing scrutiny due to developments such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the energy crisis and the wars in Ukraine and Iran.
A well-known sticking point within the European bioeconomy is that, whilst Europe is an international leader in research and pilot projects, commercial production capacity often lags behind that of the United States and Asia. In particular, the transition from demonstration projects to industrial scale proves difficult to finance. BIC now explicitly links this challenge to defence and security. According to the organisation, dual-use applications can contribute to new market opportunities for bio-based innovations, whilst defence-related applications can in turn accelerate investment and industrial upscaling.
Read the full report in the BIC knowledge base.
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