LVIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s voracious appetite for killer drones, its tech arms race against Russia and the battlefield experience it gives manufacturers make it crucial for companies to be present there. That’s why Germany’s Quantum Systems is ramping up its production inside Ukraine as well as bolstering cooperation with its plants in Germany. “We are certainly a role model on how to do it, and we are all models for both sides, because while everyone starts speaking about joint ventures, the possibility to produce here and there, we have been doing it for years,” Oleksandr Berezhny, managing director of Quantum Systems Ukraine, told POLITICO at a drone testing event being held this week in western Ukraine. Quantum’s reconnaissance Vector drones were among the first donated to Ukraine as humanitarian aid in the initial weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022. Over the next three years, Quantum Systems opened facilities across the war-torn country — an addition to its existing production and delivery lines in Germany, the United States and Australia. Being in Ukraine is vital to any military drone maker. “The whole development in the drone industry is coming right from the Donbas, not from Silicon Valley,” said Matthias Lehna, Quantum’s director for business development and government relations. While NATO helps sets the standards for military gear, rapid development needs field testing in the frontline conditions of Ukraine. One example is Quantum Systems’ new updated AI-powered reconnaissance Vector drone, which not only sees but also hears the enemy thanks to its WASP acoustic sensor, which was presented at this week’s show. The sensor “allows drone pilots to detect artillery and other weapons from a large distance by the sound they make,” said Berezhny. “We are currently testing it together with their rocket and artillery command to fix the range, to fix the precision and to fix the technical specifications … we will go through the functional tests to get weaponry adoption to service by the armed forces of Ukraine with these updates,” he said. LOOKING FOR DEALS That kind of cooperation is what other drone companies are hoping to copy. This week’s event saw dozens of Ukrainian drone producers demonstrating their buzzing aircraft, hoping to interest Western companies in joint ventures to produce battle-hardened gear. While NATO helps sets the standards for military gear, rapid development needs field testing in the frontline conditions of Ukraine. | David Young/Picture Alliance via Getty Images The Ukrainian government is making efforts to slash red tape, eliminate the corruption that continues to haunt procurement and make it easier for such deals to happen. Earlier this month, Armin Papperger, CEO of Germany’s Rheinmetall, complained that Ukrainian bureaucracy and a lack of cash are stalling progress on the company’s new ammunition factory in Ukraine.  Ukraine’s DotChain Defense procurement system, introduced earlier this year, allows drone manufacturers to speed up deliveries to the front by selling directly to military units instead of the previously centralized and slow procedure through the State Agency for Defense Procurement. Kyiv is hoping that the experience of companies like Quantum Systems, which is happy with its presence in Ukraine, will entice other companies to take the plunge. “I’m frequently being asked by the Ukrainian armed forces, by the MOD, to speak with the foreign companies that are entering this market,” Lehna said. “They are asking me to talk to them and to describe the process, the challenges that they can face. And my answer is, ‘Come on.'” Bereznhy did confirm problems with Ukrainian red tape, but added: “If there was a football match between the German and Ukrainian bureaucracy, who knows who would win?” He said that streamlined procedures, which allow a company to be set up in 10 minutes, and the ability to hire experienced staff make a compelling case. “With open and transparent communications with the ministry of defense, the company can really work successfully in Ukraine,” Berezhny said. Added to bureaucratic hassles is the lethal danger of Russia, which hunts and attacks military factories. “Ukraine is the biggest European country in terms of square meters, but it’s a small country for the Russian rockets, unfortunately,” said Berezhny. That prompts companies like Quantum to minimize risks by distributing production across Ukraine as well as cooperating with its factories in safe European countries. Using those methods, Quantum Systems was able to scale up production from 40 drones to 80 drones per month at its secret facilities around Ukraine; its German plants produce 120 a month. That synergy is working for Quantum. “While German engineering is precise, it is sometimes looking to solutions which take more time, because we have the time in Germany, but I think the combination of the sense of urgency here, development in Ukraine with German engineering excellence, it’s coming together here in a perfect way,” Lehna said.

Vast amounts of valuable thermal energy are slipping through the fingers of Europe’s critical industries and institutions every day, as the heat escapes from their operations or remains untapped from natural ambient sources like nearby land, air or water. Today, some businesses and communities are harnessing this heat using innovative heat pump technologies to dramatically cut costs and CO2 emissions. As Europe races to revitalize key industries and accelerate growth, deploying heat pumps at scale is a key strategy for success. Consider this: in 2024 alone, Johnson Controls’ heat pumps cut energy costs for customers by 53 percent and emissions by 60 percent. > in 2024 alone, Johnson Controls’ heat pumps cut energy costs for customers by > 53 percent and emissions by 60 percent. Sound too good to be true? Let’s look at organizations realizing this powerful win-win every day. A hospital in Germany put a heat pump to work to tap heat energy 200 meters below the facility and realized a 30 percent cut in energy costs while producing enough heat to cover 80 percent of the hospital’s demand. The Aalborg hospital in Denmark is close to zeroing out carbon emissions, achieving an 80-90 percent cut while driving energy costs down by 80 percent. And in the UK, Hounslow Council transitioned from gas boilers to air source heat pumps, cutting its energy costs and CO2 emissions by 50 percent across more than 60 schools and public buildings. Natural and waste heat energy resources can be put to work for industry as well. Take, for example, a leading food company in Spain. Installing heat pumps at two of their manufacturing facilities enabled them to save €1.5 million per year and reduce CO2 emissions by nearly 2,000 tons, the equivalent annual emissions of around 400 homes. Nestle’s Biessenhofen plant in Germany also significantly cut energy costs for hot water production while lowering CO2 emissions by 10 percent.   The heat pumps powering these successes? Made by Johnson Controls here in Europe. So, the opportunity at hand is magnified as Europe can lead in cutting-edge energy technologies while putting the machines to work to boost core, centuries-old and critical legacy industries. To put the potential of industry heating needs and excess industrial heat in context, heat accounts for more than 60 percent of energy use in European industries, according to the European Heat Pump Association. Meanwhile, a leading European industrial company estimates that wasted heat in the European Union would just about meet the bloc’s entire energy demands for central heating and hot water. > To put the potential of industry heating needs and excess industrial heat in > context, heat accounts for more than 60 percent of energy use in European > industries, The fact is that untapped heat energy is everywhere. It’s critical that we put it to work now.  A catalyst for a competitive, energy-secure and sustainable Europe   Today EU companies pay 2-3 times more for their electricity than competitors in the United States and China — a disparity that puts a constraint on the competitiveness of European industries, according to analysis by the Draghi Report on the future of Europe’s competitiveness. The report calls for immediate action to lower energy costs and emissions as a combined competition and climate strategy.  With the visionary Clean Industrial Deal, European leaders are moving to do just that. Heat pumps can be front and center in this agenda. Heat pumps quickly bolster the bottom line: they are state-of-the-art, so they ensure the reliability and uptime of critical operations; and they are essential in driving every euro to growth and innovation instead of going out the door in excess energy bills. As leaders turn the Clean Industrial Deal into legislation this year, they can ensure essential industries and organizations prosper by including incentives for heat pumps, while also reforming electricity pricing so the full magnitude of savings can be realized. It is estimated that in Germany in 2024, for example, extraneous taxes on the electric bill represented 30 percent of cost — artificially increasing the cost of electricity and narrowing instead of increasing choices to meet critical energy needs with clean electricity.  Expansive troves of natural and wasted energy represent a huge opportunity for growth and competitiveness. Heat pump technologies are the enablers. They tap into this ‘free energy’ and transform it into the fuel that drives industrial processes, heats spaces, and delivers the higher temperature water and energy that’s essential for processing, pasteurizing, bulking and sterilizing. Natural and waste heat: a natural resource for companies   Seen at scale, our natural and escaping industrial heat are a new natural energy resource to be put to work, and a powerful economic catalyst to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness.   Visualization of the Hamburg Dradenau site where four 15-MW heat pumps will tap into treated wastewater to supply green heat to around 39,000 homes from 2026. Natural and waste energy is all around us. Recovering heat from a city’s wastewater treatment plant represents a powerful example. In Utrecht, the Netherlands, for example, a heat pump extracts residual heat from treated wastewater to provide heat to around 20,000 homes. And from 2026 in Hamburg, Germany, four large-scale heat pumps will extract heat from treated wastewater and feed it into the central district heating network, heating around 39,000 homes. Pharmaceutical companies, chemical facilities, and food and beverage enterprises are among the industries that can tap into energy they generate as a byproduct of the processes that produce the medicines and products we rely on every day.  In our modern data and information technology economy, data centers are among the biggest new sources of excess heat. The International Energy Agency notes that reused heat from data centers could meet around 300 TWh of heating demand by 2030, equivalent to 10 percent of European space heating needs. As artificial intelligence leads to increasingly more computing power in data centers, those numbers will grow significantly. The fact that up to half of the energy consumed by a data center is needed for cooling demonstrates how much heat is available. With heat pumps, we can capture that heat and put it to productive use. A trifecta for competitiveness, energy security and carbon neutrality Heat pump systems are key for Europe’s competitiveness, its energy security and tackling climate change. Tapping into the vast energy resources that are available everywhere and right now, heat pumps have the potential to become one of the continent’s next biggest industrial success stories. Let’s seize the moment for a future of economic strength and security, environmental health, and having pride in them being made right here. > Heat pump systems are key for Europe’s competitiveness, its energy security > and tackling climate change.

BRUSSELS — Europe’s favorite bottle of red or white may come with an unwanted ingredient: toxic chemicals that don’t break down naturally. A new investigation has found widespread contamination in European wines with trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) — a persistent byproduct of PFAS, the group of industrial chemicals widely known as “forever chemicals.” None of the wines produced in the past few years across 10 EU countries came back clean. In some bottles, levels were found to be 100 times higher than what is typically measured in drinking water. The study, published on Wednesday by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe, adds fresh urgency to calls for a rapid phase-out of pesticides containing PFAS, a family of human-made chemicals designed to withstand heat, water and oil, and to resist breaking down in the environment. Wine production is among the heaviest users of pesticides in European agriculture, particularly fungicides, making vineyards a likely hotspot for chemical accumulation. Grapes are especially vulnerable to fungal diseases, requiring frequent spraying throughout the growing season, including with some products that contain PFAS compounds. Researchers found that while TFA was undetectable in wines harvested before 1988, contamination levels have steadily increased since then — reaching up to 320 micrograms per liter in bottles from the last three vintages, a level more than 3,000 times the EU’s legal limit for pesticide residues in groundwater. The study’s authors link this rise to the growing use of PFAS-based pesticides and newer fluorinated refrigerants over the past decade. “This is a red flag that should not be ignored,” said Helmut Burtscher-Schaden of Austrian NGO Global 2000, who led the research. “The massive accumulation of TFA in plants means we are likely ingesting far more of this forever chemical through our food than previously assumed.” The report, titled Message from the Bottle, analyzed 49 wines, including both conventional and organic products. While organic wines tended to have lower TFA concentrations, none were free of contamination. Wines from Austria showed particularly high levels, though researchers emphasized that the problem spans the continent. “This is not a local issue, it’s a global one,” warned Michael Müller, professor of pharmaceutical and medicinal chemistry at the University of Freiburg, who conducted an independent study that confirmed similar results. “There are no more uncontaminated wines left. Even organic farming cannot fully shield against this pollution because TFA is now ubiquitous in the environment.” The findings highlight the growing scrutiny on PFAS — a broad class of fluorinated compounds used in products from non-stick cookware to firefighting foams and agricultural pesticides. These substances are prized for their durability but have been shown to accumulate in the environment and in living organisms, with links to cancer, liver damage and reproductive harm. While the risks of long-chain PFAS have long been recognized, TFA had until recently been considered relatively benign by both regulators and manufacturers. That view is now being challenged. A 2021 industry-funded study under the EU’s REACH chemicals regulation linked TFA exposure to severe malformations in rabbit fetuses, prompting regulators to propose classifying TFA as “toxic to reproduction.” “This makes it all the more urgent to act,” said Salomé Roynel, policy officer at PAN Europe. She pointed out that under current EU pesticide rules, metabolites that pose risks to reproductive health should not be detectable in groundwater above 0.1 micrograms per liter — a limit TFA regularly exceeds in both water and, now, food. The timing of the report adds political pressure just weeks before EU member states are due to vote on whether to ban flutolanil, a PFAS pesticide identified as a significant TFA emitter. Campaigners argue that the EU must go further, pushing for a group-wide ban on all PFAS pesticides. Wine production is among the heaviest users of pesticides in European agriculture, particularly fungicides, making vineyards a likely hotspot for chemical accumulation. | Philippe Lopez/AFP via Getty Images “The vote on flutolanil is a first test of whether policymakers take this threat seriously,” Roynel said. “But ultimately, we need to eliminate the entire category of these chemicals from agriculture.” Industry groups are likely to push back, arguing that PFAS-based pesticides remain crucial for crop protection. But Müller counters that claim, saying alternatives are available: “There are substitutes. The idea that these chemicals are essential is simply not true.” With the EU’s broader PFAS restrictions currently under discussion, the wine study injects fresh urgency into debates over how to tackle chemical pollution and protect Europe’s food supply. “The more we delay, the worse the contamination becomes,” said Burtscher-Schaden. “And because we’re dealing with a forever chemical, every year of inaction locks in the damage for generations to come.” The European Commission declined to comment on the report. This story has been updated with a no comment from the European Commission.