Turning air into food: is carbon capture the future?

As the conversation around the links between climate change and the food supply chain intensifies, most energy is being put into reducing emissions. But there is a small but growing set of innovations that instead focus on leveraging emissions, specifically CO₂ captured in the atmosphere, to create ingredients. While this may seem like science fiction, these innovations only try to replicate what already naturally occurs in nature. We will look at the three most explored pathways, each incrementally more complex, to transform CO₂ into food.

1 - Algae: the easiest solution, but not always the tastiest

As mentioned above, multiple organisms naturally “eat” carbon to grow. Algae is the most striking example of a natural carbon sink that grows while “capturing” CO₂ to feed itself of the carbon while releasing oxygen into the atmosphere.

While it is easy to cultivate algae in the open air, as is the case for most spirulina production, it also means that the ingredients produced will absorb the contaminants of the surrounding air and water. The solution is a controlled environment (an inside location). That’s precisely what happens with the “Taste of Tomorrow” project at SIGEP, where sunlight is used to cultivate algae in a preserved environment. That’s a fascinating way to demonstrate the ability to produce an ingredient, in this instance, used to create gelato, with limited resources.

Then, there is the question of taste: even if multiple microalgae are considered superfood ingredients, they do not match the taste of most consumers.

2 - Creating a raw source of protein out of CO₂

The second approach is here to provide better-tasting products. The idea is quite as simple on paper as it is complex to materialise: companies look in nature for a bacteria which, through fermentation, will feed from captured carbon and some added nutrients to create a raw source of protein.

This process is energy-intensive and, hence, costly. Nonetheless, a handful of well-funded startups are working on it. Solar Foods, a Finnish startup, is probably the most well-known. Its protein, considered a novel food ingredient in Europe, is already approved for commercial use in the US and Singapore. In partnership with Fazer and Ajinomoto, it launched confectionary products to test consumer appetite.

3 - Creating milk (and more) out of CO₂

A third and more distant approach is to use the same technology to create direct ingredients that we know, notably dairy products. The twist, which may be too much for many, is genetically editing the microorganisms to modify the protein they produce through fermentation.

Interestingly, this novel and forward-looking project is being pursued in Europe, with strong financial backing from the EU Commission.

A Future Where CO₂ Isn’t the Problem—It’s the Solution

A source of captured carbon is required for all the technologies mentioned above. Again, there are multiple views here. This carbon could be pumped out of the atmosphere with big reversed fans or directly at industrial facilities that we don’t know yet how to decarbonise (such as cement production plants).

Now, multiple challenges remain, notably around price and scalability. It would require massive industrial investments and access to an unlimited source of clean energy. However, the possible introduction of a carbon tax on all consumer goods, especially on food products, could boost these protein sources, as they are carbon-negative and would get “sponsored” by receiving money for each gram of CO2 removed from the atmosphere.