Maker hopes solein, a protein grown with CO2 and electricity, will reduce the environmental impact of agriculture
Nothing seems extraordinary on a plate of new ravioli made with solein. It looks and tastes just like pasta.
But the origin of the proteins that give it its full-bodied taste is extraordinary: they come from Europe’s first factory to make human food from electrical energy and air.
The plant’s owner, Solar Foods, has started production at a site in Vantaa, near the Finnish capital of Helsinki, which will produce 160 tonnes of food a year. This follows several years of lab-scale production.
Solar Foods has already secured approval for a new sole feed in Singapore and will introduce its products in the U. S. and Canada. The U. S. will be expected this fall and then in the EU until the end of 2025, and also in the U. K. , if the regulator can weather the deluge. of cannabis-related products.
The plant’s production would possibly be modest compared to the global food industry, but Pasi Vainikka, co-founder and CEO of Solar Foods, hopes that demonstrating how his generation works will be a step in the human food revolution.
Food and agriculture are to blame for about a quarter of all global warming-like carbon emissions. Its percentage of pollutants is likely to increase as other industries turn to green electric power and the ever-expanding middle categories demand more meat for their tables. Until now, the goal of some climate activists has been to try to convince other people to eat less meat and more plants. Non-cultured proteins such as solein may make this technique more appealing.
Soline comes in the form of a yellowish powder composed of single-celled organisms, from the yeast used in baking or to make beer. The company hopes that those proteins can be used in meat substitutes, cheeses and smoothies, as well as being an upgrade item. eggs in noodles, pasta, and mayonnaise.
The ravioli served this week was egg solein, with a cream cheese solein edition. Finnish pastry chef Fazer has already sold chocolate bars with added solein (which is also a convenient source of iron for vegans) in Singapore. Last year, a Singaporean eater created a chocolate sunflower ice cream to replace cow’s milk.
Vainikka was studying renewable energy systems at a Finnish think tank in 2014 when he met his co-founder, Juha-Pekka Pitkänen, a bioprocess scientist. Pitkänen told him about the microbes that live in the soil and release the energy they want to live from the oxidation of hydrogen. (instead of glucose used by humans, for example).
Together they built a 200-litre fermenter in a garage near Helsinki, to prove that the generation could be used only for food, but then they went out into the wild “looking for new potatoes to grow”. All Vainikka will say about the origin of solein is that it was discovered somewhere “close to shore” in the Baltic Sea.
Almost all of the food humans consume today ultimately comes from plants, which use the sun’s energy for photosynthesis. This procedure converts carbon dioxide and water into the molecules they want to grow. Solar Foods, on the other hand, uses the same renewable electrical energy from the sun to separate water. It then transmits hydrogen and oxygen to microbes in a beer tank, as well as carbon dioxide captured from the air in the company’s workplace ventilation system.
The claim that proteins are made from scratch is “never more than 95% true,” Vaninika says: 5% of the aggregate in the brewing vessel is a solution that contains other minerals through the cells, such as iron, magnesium, calcium, and phosphorus. The microbes are then pasteurized (killed) and then dried in a centrifuge and hot air, leaving behind a powder that can be used in food.
The procedure can also use CO2 from, for example, burning fuels: the molecule would eventually return to the environment once humans ate the solein and exhaled the carbon again. The true climate benefits of solein come from trimming the vast tracts of land used. – and abused through deforestation on an epic scale – for animal feed and pasture. Instead, renewed forests can simply sequester carbon.
Efficient U. S. farmers get 3. 3 tons of soybeans for every acre of crop, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. By contrast, Solar Foods’ pilot plant occupies one-fifth of a hectare to produce 160 tons consistent with a year.
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“As we manage to relieve the pressures on agricultural land, it may become wild again and climate subsidence will happen again,” says Vainikka.
Other corporations pursue the same dream. Dozens of people use microbes to create animal feed, even though they require sugars or fossil raw materials. A U. S. rival, Air Protein, has opened a plant in California that employs similar “hydrogenotrophs”: hydrogen consumers. It is subsidized by the multinational food company. Archer-Daniels-Midland, British bank Barclays and GV (formerly Google Ventures).
Dutch company Deep Branch, which makes fish feed, says its Proton protein will consume 60% less carbon than traditional proteins. Deep Branch plans to produce CO2 through the UK’s Drax biomass electric generator.
Corporations manufactured their products. Now they face the challenge of proving that their generation works at scale.
Vainikka says this is the biggest challenge with cultured or lab-grown meat. The market price of newly indexed corporations like Beyond Meat soared during the coronavirus pandemic bubble, only to collapse when sales plummeted. The opening of Solar Foods’ first plant will be very important in convincing investors that the company will not suffer the same fate.
In the case of meat proteins, which are much more expensive than plants or cellular agriculture, there is no party about the value of the kilo. But Solar Foods and its competitors may face other problems. Conservative politicians, specifically in the United States and Italy, have learned that lab-grown food poses a risk to their livestock and agricultural crops.
Vainikka says those fears are misplaced. It needs “the coexistence of the new and the old,” with high-quality artisanal farms along with cellular agriculture capable of delivering reasonable bulk food. He argues that this is “the opportunity of the century for the meat industry” to focus on quality rather than quality. generate as much reasonable (and heavily subsidized) meat as possible. And plant-based agriculture will remain, too, he says.
“The long term is not about dust: most of the food will come from plants,” he says. “Occasionally, salami with cultural heritage may stay. The meat in the lunch lasagna will come from cellular agriculture. “