There are more solutions than obstacles. Nicolas Zart
The geopolitical shift underway in Washington is real and consequential for Advanced Air Mobility. Federal funding is realigning toward defense and away from clean energy and alternative mobility programs. For a sector that has long relied on the DoD revenue bridge as its near-term survival mechanism, that shift creates opportunity for some OEMs — and accelerates existential pressure for others.
But while U.S. policy debates consume the industry’s attention, something structurally important is happening in Europe that most AAM coverage is missing. Europe is not retreating from clean aviation. It is consolidating around it — with a clarity of institutional purpose that the current U.S. policy environment cannot match. And within that European consolidation, one country is positioning itself in ways that capital allocators and AAM infrastructure developers should be watching closely.
The U.S. is realigning toward defense. Europe is doubling down on clean aviation sovereignty. Portugal is building the infrastructure layer that makes both relevant.
The Clean Aviation Forum Signal
On March 17 and 18, nearly 500 participants gathered in Brussels for the fifth Clean Aviation Annual Forum — the most concentrated gathering of Europe’s aviation innovation ecosystem. The theme was “The Magic Three: Competitiveness, Sustainability and Technological Sovereignty.” Those three words, placed together deliberately, are the European answer to the question the U.S. is currently answering differently.
EU Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva was direct in her framing: research and innovation must accelerate clean and smart aviation solutions and bring them to market — through steady investment, by closing the innovation gap, and by improving Europe’s collaborations.
The structural architecture behind is analytically significant. Commissioner for Sustainable Transport Apostolos Tzitzikostas outlined a clean aviation moonshot focused on three elements: strong industry partnerships, a scientific and innovation base supported by Horizon Europe, and robust industrial deployment supported by the European Competitiveness Fund. That is a full-stack investment framework — from research through deployment — of the kind the U.S. AAM sector has never had in a single coordinated instrument.
Clean Aviation Executive Director Axel Krein put it plainly: “innovation without industrialisation is only success on paper, not European competitiveness.” It is the exact critique that applies to the U.S. AAM sector right now — where OEM certification timelines advance while the infrastructure layer required to convert that certification into revenue remains severely underfunded.
The Dual-Use Bridge — And Why Europe Is Playing It Differently
The military pivot that is reshaping U.S. AAM is not absent from the European conversation — but it is being framed differently, and the framing matters.
Tomasz Husak, Director for Defence Policy at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space, acknowledged the numerous links between civil and military aviation, noting that many technologies find uses in both domains — and that there is no high-performing defence industry without a competitive civil aeronautics sector.
That is a fundamentally different logic than the U.S. version of the military pivot, where DoD contracts are primarily survival mechanisms for OEMs caught between certification delays and absent infrastructure. In the European framing, dual-use is a technology acceleration strategy, not a revenue bridge of last resort. Thibault Baldivia, Co-founder and CCO at Ascendance, argued that for startups, dual use provides an unmatched opportunity to de-risk and speed up technologies for deployment.
The distinction is subtle but consequential for capital allocators assessing European AAM exposure versus U.S. exposure. European OEMs pivoting toward dual-use are, in many cases, accelerating their commercial path. U.S. OEMs pivoting toward DoD are, in many cases, surviving their commercial delay.
The Certification Bottleneck Europe Has Not Solved
The Brussels Forum was not without its honest reckoning. Alan Newby, Director of Research and Technology at Rolls-Royce, warned that certification and development often remain bottlenecks where better collaboration is needed. That warning should register for anyone modeling European AAM timelines optimistically. EASA’s SC-VTOL certification framework is more harmonized than the FAA’s equivalent — but “more harmonized” is not the same as “faster.”
The infrastructure dependency gap that defines the U.S. market exists in Europe as well. The 24 vertiports where construction began globally in 2024 — against a planned pipeline of 1,504 — are not a U.S.-only problem. They are a global problem. European sovereign capital has not yet moved into AAM infrastructure at the scale Gulf capital has. The Forum’s emphasis on linking Horizon Europe funding to industrial deployment is an acknowledgment of exactly that gap.
Portugal: The Infrastructure Signal Nobody Is Covering
Here is where the analysis gets specific — and where the opportunity becomes visible.
At the Clean Aviation Forum in Brussels, Hugo Espírito Santo, Portugal’s Secretary of State for Infrastructure, whom we met a few years ago, advocated for strengthened cooperation at European level, stating that “fragmentation is our worst enemy” and underlining the role of Clean Aviation in providing a clear vision and framework.
Portugal’s Secretary of State for Infrastructure was not in Brussels by accident, and what he said there is not disconnected from what is happening on the ground at home.
According to The Portugal News this week, a significant infrastructure development was announced in the district of Setúbal, on Portugal’s Atlantic coast. Etermar and Energetus announced the construction of 14 renewable-fuel emergency power modules for the SIN01 building — the first phase of the Sines 4.0 Data Centre mega-project. The modules will operate on Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil, providing a low-emission backup power solution, and are expected to bring the facility’s capacity to 33 MW, making it the largest operational data centre in Portugal.
The project is led by Start Campus, which is developing a 1.2 gigawatt data centre campus at Sines. theportugalnews A 1.2 GW campus, powered by renewable-compatible fuels, in a country whose Secretary of State for Infrastructure is simultaneously advocating for European clean aviation coordination. That is not a coincidence — it is a policy posture, and it has direct implications for AAM infrastructure development in Southern Europe.
The Sines campus matters for AAM for a reason that has not appeared in any sector coverage: advanced air mobility ground infrastructure — vertiports, charging systems, power management — requires exactly the kind of high-density, renewable-compatible energy infrastructure that Sines is being built to provide. Portugal is not building AAM vertiports yet. But it is building the energy and digital backbone that would make a serious AAM ecosystem viable — and doing so in a policy environment that is explicitly aligned with European clean aviation ambitions.
Europe is not retreating from clean aviation. It is building the infrastructure layer. Portugal is one of the places where that layer is becoming visible on the ground.
What This Means for Capital Alligators
The geopolitical divergence between U.S. and European AAM policy is now producing a measurable infrastructure divergence. The U.S. military pivot is real and creates near-term revenue opportunities for OEMs with established DoD relationships. But it is also pulling policy attention and public capital away from the commercial infrastructure buildout that U.S. AAM ultimately requires.
See our latest podcast with Matt Lapin at Wiley Rein, LLC on geopolitics and supply chain strategy.
Europe’s institutional commitment — imperfect, bottlenecked at certification, although still underfunded at the infrastructure layer — is nevertheless moving in a single coordinated direction. The European Competitiveness Fund, Horizon Europe, and national-level infrastructure investment are being deliberately linked. That coordination is not something U.S. AAM has ever had.
For OEMs with European certification pathways, Gulf market access, and DoD positioning — the combination that defines Tier 1 survivability in our framework — the European institutional momentum is a tailwind, not a distraction. For pure U.S. commercial plays without European market positioning, it is increasingly a competitive gap.
Portugal specifically warrants a dedicated monitoring cadence. A country with Atlantic connectivity, a Secretary of State explicitly aligned with European clean aviation coordination, and a 1.2 GW renewable-powered data centre campus being built in the district of Setúbal is a country laying the groundwork for something. Whether AAM infrastructure development follows depends partly on whether the sector is paying attention.
I am. And I would welcome the conversation with anyone involved in the Sines 4.0 project or Portugal’s emerging clean energy infrastructure — including the possibility of bringing that story directly to The Ways We Move podcast audience.
Extended scenario modeling on European OEM positioning, EASA certification timelines, and Gulf-versus-Europe infrastructure capital flows is available to Patreon members. Join at patreon.com/c/TheWaysWeMove → Members receive two deep dives per month, the infrastructure deal tracker, and scenario modeling for each OEM survivability tier.
About the Author
Nicolas Zart is a Mobility Futurist and Strategic Intelligence Lead with 20 years in electric mobility and 14 years covering Advanced Air Mobility from prototype to certification. As founder of ElectricAirMobility.news, he tracks OEM certification timelines, infrastructure capital flows, and regulatory frameworks across North America, the Gulf, and Europe.
electricairmobility.news • linkedin.com/in/nicolaszart • patreon.com/c/TheWaysWeMove