Solar Foods has joined a group of leading European universities in a European Innovation Council (EIC) project SOLARSPOON. Utilizing Solar Foods’ proprietary microbe which feeds on CO2 and hydrogen, which Solar Foods uses to produce the high-protein food ingredient Solein®, the project team, led by the University of Cambridge, aims to design a solar-powered device that combines photosynthetic bacteria with food-producing microbes to convert carbon dioxide and nitrogen from the air into essential nutrients like proteins and fats – eliminating the need for traditional farming.
European Innovation Council (EIC) is part of Horizon Europe, an EU research and innovation funding program focused on identifying, developing, and scaling up breakthrough technologies. The EUR 4 million innovation grant for SOLARSPOON is awarded by the EIC Pathfinder Challenge, which targets the exploration of exceptionally bold ideas for radically new technologies and early-stage research.
In the 4-year project, led by the Yusuf Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, Solar Foods joins a top-tier European consortium including the Technical University of Denmark, the Technical University of Munich, and Imperial College London.
“SOLARSPOON is an extensive, academic research project, which builds on everything we have accomplished so far. We are honoured to be a part of such an influential group of leading European universities,” says Dr Juha-Pekka Pitkänen, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-founder of Solar Foods.
Loading the long-term potential of Solein
Solar Foods has been producing its ground-breaking protein Solein at Factory 01, the company’s first commercial-scale production facility, since spring 2024. The unique bioprocess takes one single microbe, one of the billions of different ones found in nature, and grows it through gas fermentation, an innovative production method completely independent from land use, weather and climate conditions. Solein is cultivated using carbon dioxide and hydrogen, which is produced by splitting it from water in an electrolyzer using renewable electricity.
If the SOLARSPOON project is successful, the device developed would be the first functional prototype to achieve at least ten per cent solar-to-food conversion efficiency.
“We continuously develop our technology platform and Solein production. We have identified a way to potentially make the production of Solein even more efficient by developing the way the microbe gets its energy, and we want to research this more to load the long-term potential of our technology and proprietary microbe. In the SOLARSPOON project we research the possibility of building a more integrated device which would combine the electrolyzer and the bioreactor. Fueled by solar power, the device would further increase the production efficiency and energy efficiency of the production process, lowering the production cost at the same time”, Pitkänen says.
While firmly building its foundation on Solein, Solar Foods also actively researches new food microbes and has developed engineering methods to modify those microbes. The company is part of another EIC Pathfinder Challenge project, HYDROCOW, aiming to engineer a microbe that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen, produced from water using electricity, into beta-lactoglobulin, a major constituent of milk.
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