Solar Foods makes protein out of thin air: ‘This is the most environmentally friendly food there is’
Solein is 100 times more climate-friendly than any animal or plant-based alternative, and 10 times more efficient than soy production by a metric of usable protein yields per acre, saving on both water and land use.
FLORA SOUTHEY: ‘Solar Foods is disconnecting food production from agriculture. The Finland-based start-up is using a proprietary organism, carbon dioxide (CO2), water, and renewable electricity, to manufacture a high- protein ingredient. Branded ‘Solein’, the ingredient aims to boost sustainable protein content in products such as bread, pasta, yoghurt, and ready meals. Solar Foods also perceives its innovation as a ‘platform technology’ that could be leveraged by the meat analogue sector.
Once brands such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, for example, scale-up beyond their means, Solar Foods’ CEO and co-founder Pasi Vainikka suggested Solein could help meet their high protein demands. “They need a lot of protein ingredients…[and] we can provide a way for them to disconnect from agriculture,” he told FoodNavigator. In the future, Solar Foods could also help feed cultured meat cells the ‘amino acid cocktail’ required to produce lab-grown meat, Vainikka continued, to ultimately eliminate dependence on conventional farming systems in the sector…
“We thought that making food from CO2, water captured from the air, and renewable electricity – which is becoming cheaper and cheaper – would make for the most environmentally friendly food there is.
“We could therefore disconnect food production from agriculture, which would then enable scaling without agricultural limitations [such as weather and irrigation],” Vainikka continued…
According to Solar Foods, the ingredient is 100 times more climate-friendly than any animal or plant-based alternative, saving on both water and land use. Whereas 15,000 litres of water are required to produce one kilogram of beef, and 2,500 litres of water are used to produce one kilogram of soy, just 10 litres of water is needed to produce one kilogram of Solein. In terms of land efficiency, Solein is 10 times more efficient than soy production by a metric of usable protein yields per acre, according to the start-up’. SOURCE…
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