The planet faces the twin challenges of accelerating climate change and population growth. Plant and animal agriculture is struggling to keep up, which is contributing to the problem.
Innovative solutions to food production are not just desirable, they are essential, and many food innovators are trying to address this growing need.
Not so with Finnish startup Solar Foods, which believes it has found a novel solution to both problems: Solein, a nutritional powder with a nutritional profile similar to dried meat. It contains all the essential amino acids, dietary fiber, and numerous essential vitamins required by the human body.
Additionally, producing solein uses only a fraction of the energy costs of plant or animal agriculture, has a relatively small production footprint, can be produced much faster than other protein sources, and could theoretically provide an infinite food supply using electricity and air.
While this may sound like science fiction, Solein is already in production and could be on your dinner table by the end of the year.
What is Solar Foods?
The company says Solane has a distinctive yellow color and tastes good on everything. Credit: Solar Foods
Solar Foods started at a national research institute in Finland, where a team of scientists from various disciplines began putting together ideas for a new type of agriculture.
“We’re a classic example of where something new emerges from the intersection of scientific disciplines,” Dr. Pasi Vainikka, co-founder and CEO of Solar Foods, told Interesting Engineering. Vainikka, who worked in the lab researching energy systems, learned from his colleagues about microbes that don’t use sugar as an energy source, but instead use hydrogen to metabolize carbon dioxide.
From these discussions came the realization that electricity could provide the hydrogen for these organisms to thrive, with just the water in the tanks and carbon dioxide from the air. “If organisms can eat, they can convert electricity into food,” Vainikka says. “And so, eight, nine, maybe almost 10 years after that initial idea, here we are.”
Founded in 2017, Solar Foods has invested more than €42 million to build its first biomass factory, Factory 01, as a proof of concept, which will produce 160 tonnes of edible biomass per year in 20,000 litre fermentation tanks, enough to make six million meals.
The Science of Solane
Fermentation tanks for producing solein. Courtesy of Solar Foods.
Solar Food’s revolutionary approach involves growing these microorganisms in large fermentation tanks, then filtering and drying them into a fine powder, offering a sustainable alternative to conventional agriculture.
“These hydrogen-oxidizing microbes utilize hydrogen dissolved in a water-based medium,” Vainikka explains. “When we mix the gases, carbon dioxide and hydrogen, the microbes can use the hydrogen that passes through their cells as an energy source and begin to reduce their carbon source, carbon dioxide, just like photosynthetic plants.”
These microorganisms feed on the dissolved carbon dioxide and grow exponentially. After fermentation, the resulting biomass is filtered and dried into a thick powder rich in protein, fiber, fat and vitamins. This whole food can be used as an ingredient in a variety of dishes.
This method of protein production is particularly innovative because it decouples mass food production from traditional agriculture: “Our approach allows us to grow organisms based on non-agricultural commodities and sugars, decoupling their production from the environmental impacts of agriculture,” Vainikka added.
Addressing the most pressing environmental issues
Industrial animal agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. Credit: USDA / Flickr
The environmental benefits of the Solar Foods process cannot be underestimated. Agriculture is responsible for significant habitat loss and greenhouse gas emissions, especially industrialized animal agriculture.
“If we take the Paris Climate Accords seriously, they say humanity needs to be carbon neutral or carbon negative in a few decades,” Vainikka says, “and that won’t happen if we don’t do something about industrial agriculture, and especially industrial livestock, because 80 percent of the environmental impacts of the food system are from animal-based production.”
That makes Solar Foods’ Solein especially important, since its goal is to replace animal meat as a protein source. What’s more, Solar Foods’ production process uses just 1% of the energy of industrial animal agriculture for the same amount of food. So, if Solar Foods is successful, it has the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions from animal agriculture while providing a nutritious alternative.
Expanding Solein Production
But energy remains a concern when scaling up production—“half of the cost of production is electricity,” Vainikka explains—and yet the overall environmental impact is only about one-tenth of that of plant-protein production and just 1% of that of meat production.
As the cost of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind has fallen dramatically, further declines in renewable energy prices will directly reduce Solein’s costs to customers and potentially make it more available around the world.
A key challenge for Solar Foods is scaling up production to meet global demand, and while the company’s Factory 01 has already demonstrated proof of concept, Solar Foods still has a lot of work to do before it becomes commercially viable.
“These are new foods and they need regulatory approval, and that takes time,” Vainikka said. “We’ve had regulatory approval in Singapore for a year and a half now, and we’re expecting regulatory approval in the US in the fall, so we’re on track to launch the product in the US this year – on a smaller scale, but still. The EU is very bureaucratic, so we’ll see how it goes.”
“But most of the planet is open to U.S. regulatory approval,” Vainikka added. “Many other countries are [US FDA approval] as a basis for state recognition.”
Of course, regulatory approval is only one consideration in scaling up production; manufacturing capacity is the most important.
Solar Foods is securing contracts with potential clients to ensure a steady revenue stream and operate larger factories. Vainikka said Solar Foods aims to have a factory with multiple fermenters, each with a capacity of more than 200 cubic meters, by 2026.
This facility marks a significant milestone and will enable the company to generate revenue and have a significant impact on the global protein market.
Overcoming cultural and market barriers
Solar Foods can be used in any recipe. Credit: Solar Foods
While the technical and environmental benefits of Solar Foods’ protein are clear, market adoption presents challenges. Cultural perceptions of alternative proteins vary widely. “It’s all about the first taste,” Vainikka emphasizes. “So if we can get people to taste it at least once, we shouldn’t fail to get that taste.”
Solar Foods has invested a lot of time and resources into perfecting the taste and texture to ensure people love their products.
“We’ve also invested heavily in our in-house restaurant and are inviting customers in to taste our ice cream products as soon as possible,” said Vainikka. Solane ice cream is already being served at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Singapore, and Vainikka said the response has been very positive.
What is the future of food production?
Looking to the future, Solar Foods envisions a future where protein production is sustainable, efficient, and decoupled from the environmental impacts of conventional agriculture. The company’s technology addresses the pressing issues of climate change and food security, offering a glimpse into a world where food production is in harmony with the planet’s ecological limits.
Changing traditional farming methods will be difficult, as these practices are deeply ingrained around the world. But solein has a big advantage: it can produce large amounts of nutritious food with very little space and energy. This is an advantage that cannot be ignored, especially in areas where people often struggle to get enough food.
While the climate crisis is only set to get worse in the coming decades, Solar Foods’ Solein offers a compelling solution to many of the problems that have so far seen little tangible progress.
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About the Editor
John Leffler John is a writer and programmer living in New York City. He writes about computers, gadgets, games, VR/AR, and related consumer tech. You can find him on Twitter at @thisdotjohn.
