Solar Foods Wants to Feed the World with Food Made from Air

The planet faces dual challenges: accelerating climate change and a growing population. Plant and animal agriculture is struggling to keep up, which is contributing to the problem.

Innovative solutions in food production are not only desirable, but essential, and many innovators in the food industry are trying to meet this growing demand.

But they differ from Finnish startup Solar Foods, which believes it has found a novel solution to both problems: Solein, a nutritional powder with a similar nutritional profile to dried meat. It contains all the essential amino acids the human body needs, dietary fiber, and a ton of essential vitamins.

Furthermore, Solein production incurs only a fraction of the energy costs of protein production in plant or animal agriculture, requires a relatively small carbon footprint, is much faster to produce than other protein sources, and could theoretically provide an infinite supply of food using electricity and air.

If this sounds like science fiction, Solein is already in production and could hit your kitchen table later this year.

What is Solar Foods?

The origins of Solar Foods date back to the Finnish National Research Institute, where a team of scientists from various fields began to put together the concept of a new type of agriculture.

“We are a classic example of how new things emerge from the intersection of scientific disciplines,” said Dr. Pasi Vainikka, co-founder and CEO of Solar Foods Interesting engineering. Vainikka, who worked on energy systems research at the Institute, learned from a colleague about a microorganism that does not use sugar as an energy source, instead relying on hydrogen to metabolize carbon dioxide.

Those discussions sparked the realization that electricity could provide the organisms with hydrogen to reproduce using only a reservoir of water and carbon dioxide in the air. “If the organisms were edible, we could convert electricity into food,” Vainikka said. “And here we are, about eight, nine, almost 10 years after those first thoughts.”

Founded in 2017, Solar Foods has invested more than €42 million to build its first biomass factory, Factory 01, as a proof of concept. The factory’s 20,000-litre fermentation tank can produce 160 tonnes of edible biomass per year, enough to make six million meals.

The science behind Solein

Solar Food’s groundbreaking approach involves cultivating microorganisms in large fermentation tanks, which can then be filtered and dried into a fine powder, offering a sustainable alternative to traditional farming.

“These hydrogen-oxidizing microbes use dissolved hydrogen in the aquatic environment,” explains Vainikka. “We mix gases, CO2 and hydrogen, and the microbe has the ability to use the hydrogen passing through the cell as an energy source to start reducing carbon dioxide, which is its carbon source, similar to photosynthetic plants.”

As these microbes feed on dissolved carbon dioxide, they multiply exponentially. After fermentation, the resulting biomass is filtered and dried into a rich powder rich in protein, dietary fiber, fats and vitamins. All of this food can be used as an ingredient in any number of dishes.

This method of protein production is particularly innovative because it separates mass food production from traditional agriculture. “Our approach allows us to grow an organism based on non-agricultural products or sugars, decoupling its production from the environmental impact of agriculture,” Vainikka added.

Solving our most pressing environmental problems

The environmental benefits of the Solar Foods process cannot be overstated. Agriculture is responsible for significant habitat loss and greenhouse gas emissions, with industrialized animal agriculture being particularly damaging.

“If we take the Paris Agreement seriously, it tells us that we need to become, as humans, carbon neutral after a few decades, or even carbon negative,” Vainikka said, “and that won’t happen if we do nothing about industrial agriculture and specifically industrial animal agriculture, because 80 percent of the environmental impact of the food system comes from animal production.”

This makes Solar Foods’ Solein particularly important because it aims to replace animal meat as a source of protein. What’s more, Solar Foods’ production process uses just one percent of the energy used in industrial animal farming for the same amount of food, so if Solar Foods is successful, it could drastically reduce the carbon footprint of animal farming while providing a nutritious substitute.

Increasing Solein production

But as production ramps up, energy remains an issue. “Half of our production costs are electricity,” Vainikka explained, but the overall environmental impact is about one-tenth of that of plant protein production and just one percent of meat production.

With the dramatic decline in the cost of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, any further decline in renewable energy prices could directly reduce the cost of Solein to customers, making it more available worldwide.

Solar Foods’ critical challenge is to increase production to meet global demand. The company’s Factory 01 has already demonstrated its proof of concept, but Solar Foods still has a long way to go to become commercially viable.

“These are new food products and require regulatory approval, which takes time,” Vainikka said. “We’ve had regulatory approval in Singapore for a year and a half, we know we’ll get regulatory approval in the US in the fall, so we’ll be launching the product in the US this year – on a small scale, but still – and the EU is very bureaucratic, so we’ll find out later how that works out.” will flow.”

“But most of the planet is sort of freed up by US regulatory approval,” Vainikka added, “many other countries accept (US FDA approval) as the basis for their domestic approval.”

Of course, regulatory approval is just one factor in scaling up production. Production capabilities will be the most important factor.

Solar Foods is securing contracts with potential customers to ensure a solid revenue stream and make the larger plant profitable. Vainikka said that by 2026, Solar Foods aims to have a plant with several fermenters, each with a capacity of at least 200 cubic meters.

This facility will be a milestone that will enable the company to achieve profitability and make a significant impact on the global protein market.

Overcoming cultural and market barriers

While the technological and environmental benefits of Solar Foods protein are clear, getting it to market has its challenges. Cultural perceptions of alternative proteins vary widely. “First taste is everything,” Vainikka emphasizes, “so if you can get people to try it at least once, you shouldn’t mess it up.”

To ensure Solar Foods is successful in gaining customers for its product, the company has invested significant time and resources into perfecting its taste and texture.

“We have also invested heavily in a restaurant at our factory, where we invite guests to try our ice cream as soon as possible,” Vainikka said. Solein ice cream is already served in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Singapore, and Vainikka says the response has been very positive.

What is the future of food production?

Looking ahead, Solar Foods imagines a future where protein production is sustainable, efficient and divorced from the environmental impact of traditional agriculture. Their technology addresses the pressing issues of climate change and food security and offers insight into a world where food production is harmonized with the planet’s ecological limits.

Changing traditional farming methods will be a challenge, as these practices have deep cultural roots around the world. But Solein has big advantages. It can produce a lot of nutritious food using very little space and energy. It’s hard to ignore, especially in places where food is often scarce.

With the climate crisis only getting worse over the coming decades, Solar Foods’ Solein offers a compelling solution to many of the problems we have yet to make significant progress on.