Europe’s chemicals sector may get temporary pricing relief from supply disruptions, but the deeper issue is harder to solve. Weak demand, high energy costs and Asian capacity growth are forcing the industry to rethink what it produces, where it produces and how it competes.

As AI data centers, nuclear power and semiconductor fabs scale, water is becoming a strategic infrastructure constraint. The next industrial bottleneck may not only be access to power, but access to reliable cooling and process water.