Introduced by Andreas Munk Holm, this EUVC Live at GoWest series spotlights the thought leadership of policymakers, institutional investors, GPs, corporates, and public capital leaders around one defining question:
How does Europe mobilize its own capital to secure its technological future?
Across the sessions, one theme emerges repeatedly:
Europe does not lack talent.
It does not lack innovation.
It does not lack savings.
It lacks coordination.
In this episode, Dr. Isabella Fandrych, Co-Founder and General Partner at Nucleus Capital, explores one of the energy transition’s most fragile bottlenecks:
Access to critical minerals.
Because decarbonization is not only about electricity.
It is about materials.
Lithium.
Copper.
Rare earths.
And today, extracting them is
Energy-intensive.
Chemically aggressive.
Environmentally destructive.
Geopolitically concentrated.
But what if the next mining superpower wasn’t a country?
What if it were a microbe?
Industrial biotechnology introduces a different extraction logic:
Not heat and blasting.
But biology and precision.
Microbes that leach metals from low-grade ores.
Proteins engineered to bind lithium from waste streams.
Plants designed to accumulate metals from soil.
Biological recovery from e-waste and industrial residues.
The reframe is powerful:
The problem is not only scarcity.
It is inefficiency.
Vast amounts of value are trapped in tailings, waste rock, and industrial byproducts.
Biology turns waste into yield.
For Europe, the implications are strategic:
Mineral sovereignty will not come only from new mines.
It may come from science.
From circular supply chains.
Decentralized extraction.
And industrial biotech scaled into infrastructure.
We cannot electrify the future with 19th-century mining logic.
And the next industrial revolution may be biological
The Hidden Constraint of Decarbonisation
Modern green technologies — batteries, wind turbines, EV motors, grid infrastructure — depend on minerals extracted through processes that are:
Energy-intensive
Chemically aggressive
Environmentally destructive
Geopolitically concentrated
At the same time:
Ore grades are declining
Extraction costs are rising
Environmental regulation is tightening
Strategic dependencies are deepening
The mineral transition risks becoming the weak link in the energy transition.
Scaling renewables without reinventing extraction risks replacing one environmental burden with another.
Reprogramming Nature for Industry
Traditional mining relies on heat, pressure, blasting, and solvents.
Industrial biotechnology asks a different question:
What if we used biology instead of brute force?
Microorganisms, enzymes, and engineered plants can extract and recover metals with molecular precision.
Technologies covered include:
Microbial mining (bioleaching): Bacteria separating metals from low-grade ores
Protein engineering: Designing proteins that selectively bind lithium, copper, or rare earths from liquid waste streams
Phytomining: Engineering plants to accumulate metals like nickel directly from soil
Biological urban mining: Recovering critical minerals from e-waste and industrial residues
These systems operate:
At lower temperatures
With reduced chemical inputs
On materials previously considered uneconomical
Biology turns waste into yield.
From Scarcity to Yield Optimization
One of the keynote’s most important reframes:
The problem is not only scarcity.
It is inefficiency.
Vast quantities of valuable minerals are
Trapped in tailings and waste rock
Lost in industrial effluents
Dispersed across electronic waste
Embedded in soils at marginal concentrations
Biological systems excel at selective binding and molecular recognition.
By engineering microbes and proteins, researchers can dramatically increase recovery rates while reducing environmental footprint.
Mining becomes less about expansion.
More about optimization.
Sovereignty Through Science
For Europe, the implications are strategic.
Critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements are heavily concentrated in a handful of geographies.
Traditional mining expansion is:
Capital-intensive
Politically sensitive
Environmentally contested
Slow to scale
Industrial biotech offers an alternative:
Lower-barrier mineral recovery
Decentralised extraction models
Circular supply chains
Reduced reliance on geopolitically sensitive imports
Instead of chasing new mines abroad, Europe could extract value from:
Its waste.
Its industrial byproducts.
Its underutilised deposits.
Startups across Europe are already piloting these approaches.
The science exists.
The question is scale.
A Biological Industrial Revolution
The first industrial revolution was mechanical.
The second was electrical.
The third was digital.
The next may be biological.
Decarbonisation requires materials at unprecedented scale.
If extraction remains carbon-heavy and geopolitically concentrated, the transition remains fragile.
Dr. Fandrych’s core message is direct:
We cannot electrify the future with 19th-century mining logic.
By turning microbes, proteins, and plants into industrial tools, Europe can:
Increase mineral yield
Reduce chemical intensity
Strengthen supply chain resilience
Build sovereign capacity in critical materials
Decarbonization needs materials.
Biology may be the cleanest way to get them.
