Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope: April 25, 2025
Solein, FOOD FROM THIN AIR, is scaling up fast!
Solein, the amazing microbe-fermented protein powder from Finland that’s essentially “food from thin air,” is scaling up fast.
Tell Congress to support cellular agriculture in the next Farm Bill!
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Reasons For Hope
Startup Solar Foods’ revolutionary new EU-funded Solein protein powder, a highly exciting “food made from air” technology long covered by this newsletter that uses microbial fermentation (aka cellular agriculture, similar to how beer is brewed) to convert carbon dioxide into human-edible protein powder, is now scaling up fast!
Solar Foods has signed MOUs with two international customers to produce at least 6,000 tonnes of Solein per year and is discussing a potential new industrial-scale investment plan to build a Factory 02, Factory 03, and Factory 04 (to join their already existing Factory 01). These three new facilities would together produce 50,000 tonnes of Solein per year.
Furthermore, Finnish food company Fazer has unveiled three new protein snack products made with Solein (a chocolate protein shake, a banoffee protein shake, and a chocolate-coated snack bar), Japanese company Ajinomoto is introducing three flavors of ice cream with Solein proteins for the Singapore market, and partner Superb Food is planning a Solein product launch in the U.S. soon. Solein has already obtained “Generally Recognized As Safe” legal approval to be sold in America and is awaiting an FDA “No Questions Letter,” while “Novel Food” regulatory approval for Solein in the EU is currently expected by 2026.
The Solein product is described as a powder resembling turmeric and tasting like “a light, nutty mix of cashews and almonds,” capable of being used as an enriching ingredient in almost anything, from gelato to noodles to snack bars. It consists of “65-70% protein, 5-8% fat, 10-15% dietary fibres and 3-5% mineral nutrients,” a profile similar to soy.
Solein is the first time in human history when edible calories have been produced and eaten without photosynthesis providing some of the energy1, and now it’s being produced at an industrial scale. Solein can be produced with just water, air and clean electricity anywhere on Earth (or beyond). It has about 1% of the environmental impact of beef. The potential reductions in land use, water use, and carbon emissions from using it as a major food ingredient are gigantic. World-changing developments!
You’ve probably heard already that Congress is still discussing the upcoming Farm Bill2, a huge investment in American agriculture (the U.S. spends an average of $648 billion per year on Farm Bill programs) that’s up for renewal for the first time since 2018. As with our previous Farm Bill-related policy actions on climate-resilient crops, methane-reducing vaccines for cattle, methane-eating microbes, phytomining, electro-agriculture, decentralized clean ammonia production, steam seed treatment, AI-accelerated crop breeding, and low-methane rice, the just-getting-started field of cellular agriculture is a brand-new invention and not really on the political radar screen yet. That means there’s a really great opportunity here to tell Congress to use the Farm Bill to help promote its deployment! Maybe we can help protect microbe-fermented proteins from being attacked and even banned at the state level by Big Ag lobbyists the way cell-cultivated clean meat has been.
The future of food could be incredibly clean and abundant - let’s give it a chance to happen in America.
Tell Congress to support cellular agriculture in the next Farm Bill!
Meat and other animal products obtain their energy from photosynthesis indirectly, e.g. from cows eating grass.
Solein is fascinating! I can imagine that it would send DJT and RFK, Jr. into fits of apoplexy. The name is sufficiently similar to soylent green that it might raise suspicions for some folks whose memories go back as far as mine. Let's hope not!
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