Using space-age technology to make “meat” out of thin air is science, not fiction.
A new entrant to the edible protein scene, the Berkeley-based startup Air Protein makes a meat alternative using NASA-inspired fermentation technology to transform CO2 — what we exhale into the air — into a complete edible protein.
While other well-known meat alternative companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat make plant-based protein from soy and peas, Air Protein is the first to make “air-based” protein by farming carbon from the air with microbes. The startup’s recent $32 million Series A funding round, closed in January and led by investors ADM Ventures, Barclays and GV (formerly Google Ventures), secures its spot in the rapidly expanding field of meatless meat in the new wave of alternative protein technology — fermentation.
Founder & CEO Dr. Lisa Dyson, an award-winning research physicist and strategy consultant, hopes Air Protein’s technology will “create the most sustainable meat available and significantly reduce the burden on our planet’s resources that is being caused by our current meat production processes,” she said in an email.
In a 2016 TED talk, Dyson asked the audience to “Imagine you are a part of a crew of astronauts traveling to Mars or some distant planet. How would you feed that crew of astronauts with limited resources in the closed system of a spaceship?” That’s the question NASA scientists asked in the 1960s that led them to the discovery that microbes could convert CO2 into food for astronauts.
Dyson and her colleague Dr. John Reed came upon this research while exploring ways to capture and recycle carbon to help with the climate crisis. They realized that they could use these microbes in a similar way to make food for people down here on spaceship Earth.
“I began focusing on the effects of climate-driven disasters while working to help rebuild New Orleans” — where her mother’s family lives — “after Hurricane Katrina,” Dyson said in the email. While investigating ways she could contribute to reducing or reversing climate change, Dyson learned that food production, from farming to processing to distribution, is one of the largest contributors. The latest estimates show the global food system making up over a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.
On top of that, clearing land for farming is one of the biggest drivers of deforestation around the world. In the Amazon rainforest, cattle ranching is the cause of 80% of current deforestation.
“As a scientist and a businesswoman, I leaned on my background and knowledge to come up with a way to make food more sustainably,” Dyson wrote. “I focused on meat, because meat production represents the largest burden on our planet in food production.”
Using fermentation tanks, which Dyson refers to as “vertical protein farms,” in a process similar to making yogurt or wine, Air Protein combines “elements from the air we breathe — carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen (with) water and mineral nutrients,” the company says. Renewable energy powers their proprietary probiotic production process by which the microbes convert CO2 into amino acids. The final product is a protein-rich flour that can be used just like soy or pea flour. This protein flour can then be made into a plethora of delicious and nutritious meatless meat products.
In conventional farming, plants absorb inputs like carbon dioxide from the air, nutrients from the soil, and energy from the sun. A crop can take months and huge amounts of land space to go from seed to harvest. Air Protein’s approach “uses exponentially less arable land, natural resources and causes fewer greenhouse gas emissions,” Dyson wrote. Air Protein farms are less limited geographically because they can expand vertically. Additionally, Dyson said, “The time it takes to make our meat is days versus the years it takes to make meat from a cow.”
The quest for sustainability is a big part of Air Protein’s vision and a big draw for the startup’s investors. “Air Protein is a compelling solution to the growing challenges of sustainably feeding the world’s population while tackling climate change and biodiversity loss,” said Andrew Challis, co-head of Principal Investments at Barclays, in a written statement.
While Air Protein is the first company to make protein from air, they’re not the only alternative protein company relying on fermentation. Impossible Foods, for example, uses fermentation to make their special ingredient heme that gives their meatless meat its meaty flavor.
Fermentation technology is enabling a new wave of alt-protein products — meat, eggs, and dairy — that are tasty and produced more sustainably and efficiently than their animal counterparts. And record levels of investment are enabling the technology.
In the first seven months of 2020 alone, $1.5 billion was invested in companies making alternative protein, according to a report by Good Food Institute (GFI) — and $435 million of that was for those using fermentation. Seeing the steady and rapid rise of innovative fermentation technology and protein products, GFI is calling fermentation the next pillar of alternative proteins.
“Fermentation is powering a new wave of alternative protein products with huge potential for improving flavor, sustainability, and production efficiency,” said Good Food Institute’s Associate Director of Science and Technology Dr. Liz Specht in the report. “Investors and innovators are recognizing this market potential, leading to a surge of activity in fermentation as an enabling platform for the alternative protein industry as a whole.”
