FinlandSolar Foods’ factory uses renewable electricity and feeds greenhouse gas-eating microorganisms to produce protein powders that replace milk and eggs.
At the newly opened factory of the Finnish company Solar Foods on the outskirts of Helsinki, scientists are growing proteins using air and electricity, AFP reported on May 23. They feed the microorganisms CO2, hydrogen and some minerals, and power the process with electricity from renewable sources. Thanks to that, they successfully created a protein powder that can replace milk and eggs.
“We can get the main food for bacteria from the air. We have started producing the world’s most sustainable protein,” said Pasi Vainikka, CEO of Solar Foods. Established in 2017, Solar Foods opened the world’s first factory to produce food from air last month.
“The majority of animal-like proteins today can be produced through cellular agriculture, and we can let farmland go wild again, thereby building carbon storage,” Vainikka said, alluding to the past. Forest and soil processes help absorb and store carbon.
The new protein that Solar Foods produces is called solein, which looks like a yellow powder. One kilogram of solein emits 130 times less greenhouse gases than protein from beef production in the European Union (EU), according to a 2021 scientific study.
Changing the way food is produced and consumed is central to fighting the climate crisis and preventing biodiversity loss, according to Emilia Nordlund, head of food research and industrial biotechnology at VTT Technical Research Center. Current predictions show that meat consumption will increase in the coming years.
“Industrial food production, especially meat and poultry production, is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions and the biggest cause of biodiversity loss, eutrophication and overconsumption. wasting fresh water,” Nordlund said. New food production technologies can help reduce emissions, she said, but improvements to existing methods are also needed.
At the Solar Foods plant, microorganisms inside the fermenter – a giant steel tank with a volume of 20,000 liters – multiply when fed greenhouse gases. The liquid containing microorganisms is continuously extracted from the tank to be processed into a pale yellow protein powder with a rich, nut-like flavor.
“The fermenter produces the same amount of protein as 300 dairy cows or 50,000 egg-laying chickens per day,” Vainikka said. That equates to 5 million protein meals per year.
Currently, the main purpose of the small factory in Helsinki is to demonstrate that the technology can be scaled up, thereby attracting investment. The new protein has been approved for sale in Singapore. Some restaurants here use this ingredient to make ice cream. However, bacterial proteins are still awaiting classification as food in the EU and US. To truly make an impact, Vainikka said, their goal is to build an industrial plant 100 times the size of the one in Helsinki.