BRB w/ Nathan P – 3 Alternative Feedstocks, Lobster Mac n Cheese & Eat Like a Fish
More sustainable carbon sources for biomanufacturing, Thomas Keller's signature holiday dish, and how seaweed farming can save fish and feed the world (#47).
Welcome back to BRB w/ Nathan P, your 5-min weekly dose of information to inspire climate action.
My mission is to make it fun, easy, and delicious to make more sustainable decisions.
Each Wednesday, I share 💥1 Breakthrough, 🥘1 Recipe, and 📚1 Book on food & climate.
💥 Breakthrough: 3 Alternative Feedstocks
To reach the COP26 goal of net zero by 2050, we need to reduce emissions from agriculture and manufacturing that each account for 20% of global emissions.
Biomanufacturing can help us get there. Microbial fermentation technologies can reduce our reliance on agriculture and fossil fuel with:
🥛 Food ingredients
🧪 Chemical products
💄 Cosmetic ingredients
After last week’s post on precision fermentation, I received many inquiries on the need for alternative feedstocks.
There are 3 types of alternative feedstocks I believe the industry needs more innovation to use: C1 substrates, C2 substrates, and food-grade waste streams.
Let’s dive in – this post will cover:
The Feedstock Dilemma
C1 Substrates
C2 Substrates
Food-Grade Waste Streams
Circularity & Scaling Challenges
1. The Feedstock Dilemma
To grow microbes and use them as ‘cell-factories,’ we need to supply them food. Their main energy source is hydrocarbons, often called ‘feedstocks’ or ‘substrates.’
Feedstocks are a crucial consideration as they can represent 1/3 of the COGS (Cost Of Goods Sold).
Most corporates and start-ups today use mono-cropped sugars from:
🌽 Corn
🎋 Sugarcane
🌰 Beetroot
These sugars are popular because they are inexpensive, pure, commercially available, and well-characterized for regulatory purposes. However, they have many issues:
⛽️ Ag & fossil fuel reliant
🌎 High ecological footprint
🏭 Inefficient end-to-end process
🌽 Farmland diverted from food consumption
We may also not have enough glucose to meet scaling needs. To displace the US chemical industry with biomanufacturing, we would need 10X the corn supply.
We need alternatives. The low-hanging fruit is waste streams from other industrial or food-grade processes, a few of which I describe below.
2. C1 Substrates
There are 4 popular candidates for C1 substrates (with one carbon atom): carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), methanol (CH3OH), and formate (HCOO-).
CO2 is found in low concentrations in the atmosphere (420 ppm or 0.042%), but can be obtained in higher concentrations from industrial processes like combustion and fermentation. Methane has 80X the global warming potential of CO2 and can be obtained from anaerobic digestion or landfill.
Using CO2 or CH4 as feedstocks in gas fermentation can prevent emissions, though CO2 must be paired with a hydrogen source as well.
Methanol and formate are also widely available and are price competitive with glucose. More than 100 million tons of methanol are produced as fossil fuel side streams. CO2 can be electrochemically reduced to make formate, so its price will vary with that of electricity.
3. C2 Substrates
There are two preferred C2 substrates (with 2 carbon atoms): ethanol and acetate.
They are both bulk chemicals, with prices often higher than C1 substrates but on par with glucose.
Acetate is produced from methanol (which we discussed above). Ethanol can be used as well, though if it is produced from starch-based sources like corn, it does not solve our original feedstock problem.
Maybe all that ethanol from alcohol-free beers could come in useful.
4. Food-Grade Waste Streams
This is where we need most innovation. Almost all food processing generates waste streams, so there are dozens of food-grade feedstocks to consider – whether it be from dairy, baking, ingredients, or fruit side streams.
For instance, Chobani’s upstate NY facility produces 80 million liters of acid whey each year. It is too acidic to dispose with wastewater, and they either spray it on fields or pay other companies to dispose of it.
The challenge with these feedstocks is consistency and purity, hence why I’m excited about what start-ups like Hyfe are working on.
PS: Acid whey is a highly valuable side-stream: the whey protein powder industry was born by purifying and drying its proteins.
5. Circularity & Scaling Challenges
Developing alternative feedstocks benefits both food processors and biomanufacturers, lowering cost and environmental impact. We need more innovation to get there.
One of the main barriers to scaling with alternative feedstocks is compositional purity, which can destabilize large-scale fermentation processes at >100,000L if the right specs are not in place.
We also need more circularity and bio-refinery approaches to improve other raw materials beyond carbon feedstocks, like upcycling phosphorus and nitrogen for media.
Working on fermentation scale-up or biomanufacturing? Book a time with me here if I can support.
It’s wonderful to have so many founders, investors, operators, and optimists here.
I will be sending a survey later this week to make more of the content you want to see in 2024.
In the meantime, I’m working on a few community-building initiatives – which would you be most interested in?
If other ideas come to mind, reply to this email and let me know.
🥘 Recipe: Lobster Mac n Cheese
Festive holiday dinners are approaching. Here is the dish your friends and family will rave about for months.
This is Thomas Keller’s spin on mac n’ cheese: butter-poached lobster atop creamy orzo with a parmesan crisp.
Reply to this email for the recipe. Happy holidays to you and yours 💝
PS: For a vegan-friendly main dish, check out the popular whole roasted cauliflower.
PPS: if you make it, please send pictures!
📚 Book: Eat Like a Fish
Given that the post above involves seafood, I am resurfacing one of my favorite reads on restorative ocean farming.
Seaweed farming on 5% of US coastal waters could create 50 million jobs and ensure food security.
The oceans provide about 15% of the world’s protein consumption today, but irresponsible practices are putting fish populations and food security at risk.
We are declaring war on the oceans by using military-grade equipment to overfish dozens species, decimate apex predator populations, and scrape endless miles of ocean floor.
We still have time to change course and make oceans the next frontier of sustainable food production.
In Eat Like a Fish, Bren Smith tells his story of becoming a restorative ocean farmer after 20 years as a commercial fisherman. He witnessed the loss of cod populations in his hometown of Newfoundland and realized fishing must change.
He has since become a pioneer of marine polycultures, a practice of cultivating in the same water column different sea greens and mollusks like:
🌿 Kelp
🪸 Dulse
🦪 Oysters
🦞 Crustaceans
🐚 Scallops & mussels
He explains that with only $20k, ocean farmers can purchase the materials and farming rights to 20 acres of coastal waters to generate over $100k each year.
Unlike land agriculture, once the farm is set up there are no additional inputs — the organisms source all they need from sunlight and available nutrients.
Bren Smith went on to found Green Wave, a Connecticut-based non-profit providing resources and know-how to enable sea farmers to plant 1 million acres in the next 10 years.
Restorative ocean farming can be a powerful boon for food security, carbon sequestration, biodiversity preservation, and job creation.
We may look back on the 21st century as the last to eat wild-caught fish. Or, we can give fish populations a chance to rebound and get our essential nutrients by eating like a fish.
My favorite quotes as teasers:
A global network of sea-vegetable farms totaling 180,000 square kilometers—roughly the size of Washington State—could provide enough protein for the entire world population.
I still miss being a commercial fisherman. But that’s over now. Overfishing, climate change, acidification have forced me to change course. Now I have more in common with a kale farmer than I do with fishermen.
Thank you for reading – BRB next week ✌️
About Me
Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier – I’m a climate optimist, food enthusiast, and avid reader. I started this newsletter after frequent questions on food tech, reading recommendations, and my secret recipes.
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