A pioneering consortium, backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Novo Nordisk Foundation, is set to transform the landscape of food production by creating proteins for human consumption out of carbon dioxide (CO2). This groundbreaking initiative aims to tackle rising global concerns regarding food insecurity and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.
The recent UN-led report indicates that severe hunger affected over 250 million people worldwide in 2022, showing a staggering increase of 65 million from the previous year. The response to this alarming development demands sustainable, safe, and robust food production that can accommodate a burgeoning global population.
The newly formed consortium, which merges expertise from global leaders in biotechnology and chemical engineering, Novozymes A/S and Topsoe A/S, with the research prowess of the Washington University in St. Louis and the Novo Nordisk Foundation CO2 Research Center (CORC) at Aarhus University, aims to address this critical challenge. Both foundations will support the initiative with generous funding of up to DKK 200 million (€27 million).
Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, described the project’s ambition to leverage CO2 for food production without relying on agricultural land as a promising solution to two significant global challenges: providing nutritious food to a growing population and climate change mitigation.
The consortium intends to employ both biological and electrochemical processes to convert CO2 into acetate, which is vinegar – a substance already recognized within the metabolism of microorganisms used in the millennia-old practice of food production through fermentation. This acetate can then be transformed into proteins used directly in food.
The innovative process holds significant implications for the sustainability of food production. By producing alternatives to animal proteins, the initiative can help decrease the demand for meat and dairy production, thereby reducing the strain on natural resources used for rearing animals and growing their feed. Furthermore, using CO2-derived acetate in the fermentation process can eliminate the need for sugar, thus liberating vast agricultural lands currently used for sugar cultivation.
The initiative aims to mature three potential production technologies and scale them up to demonstration scale (TRL 6 or above) within two years. The consortium partners’ existing infrastructure and production facilities provide an excellent platform to expedite upscaling.
Once scaled up to production, the developed technologies can transform food security approaches, particularly benefiting low- and lower-middle-income countries. The technologies could produce enough protein to feed over a billion people annually, providing a stable source of nutritious food in regions with limited potential for conventional agriculture.
Both foundations aim to ensure that the technologies are globally disseminated and affordably priced in the regions where they can be most beneficial, which will be facilitated by global access agreements with consortium partners.
Novozymes A/S’s activities will be funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, supporting activities at Washington University in St. Louis. The Novo Nordisk Foundation will fund activities at Topsoe A/S and the Novo Nordisk Foundation CO2 Research Center at Aarhus University. The total funding allocation of up to DKK 200 million (€27 million) covers two years. Continuation of support for the project’s later stages is possible if the consortium’s efforts prove successful.
Photo by Matt Benson on Unsplash
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