They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Well, we’ve been left with an overabundance of ... [+]
They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Well, we’ve been left with an overabundance of CO2 and, rather than panicking about it, the synthetic biology industry is bottling it up and leading us into a carbon neutral, sustainable future.
When future archaeologists dig down and hit the early part of the 21st Century, they might reflect on this era as the Age of Waste. They’d find evidence from the ice cores and scientific reports of the day showing CO2 levels skyrocketing since the 1950s in line with a global boom in emissions as the entire world embraced a fossil fuel-based economy.
Then there’d be the news reports rife with stories of plastic debris forming flotillas on the Pacific, burning in toxic pyres near blockaded South East Asian ports, as well as the long lamentations of other carbon-rich waste associated with industrial manufacture, the residential demands of a rapidly expanding global population, chemical fertilisers and the effluent and gaseous belches of around 30 billion cows, chickens, pigs and sheep.
Quite rightly, those with a sensible head in the here and now are calling for a dramatic decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, and quickly, lest we be plunged into the warm, acid seas of the next era - the Age of Extinction.
Yet, while many decry the excesses of our modern world, others sense an inherent opportunity. One person’s waste is an intrepid entrepreneur’s source material, and in the Age of Waste, CO2 and carbon-rich industrial by-products are lemons to those who understand that nature has held the ingredients to make delicious lemonade all along.
In our seas, ponds, forests and fields there are millions of species that exist and thrive thanks to their ability to incorporate carbon from CO2 into sugars, starch and a vast range of other molecules. Some of those molecules we can use as fuel, others we can eat. We can use yet more as precursors to produce bio-based medicines, fertilisers, pesticides and many thousands more compounds that currently pollute, but that can be produced in an eco-friendly and sustainable way.
Rather than the Age of Extinction, pioneers in the field of biotechnology are fast forwarding us into the Age of Synthetic Biology. Here are five synbio companies having a real impact on the climate crisis.
1. LanzaTech
A company “turning crisis into a feedstock opportunity”, LanzaTech recycles the polluting products of industry into biofuels and other carbon-based products. Their process uses a type of anaerobic bacteria, which were originally discovered in rabbit droppings, in bioreactors to produce ethanol from waste gas.
Listed as the number 1 company in The Biofuel Digest’s “50 Hottest Companies in the Advanced Bioeconomy” for the third year running, LanzaTech - founded in New Zealand and based in Illinois, USA - is establishing itself at “the centre of what will surely be the new carbon economy”, according to CEO Jennifer Holmgren.
The company’s disruptive innovations include the world’s first commercial plant to convert waste gas into ethanol for biofuels in China, as well as a groundbreaking project with Virgin Atlantic to produce a sustainable jet fuel that will help clean up one of the world’s most polluting sectors.
Through many years of synthetic biology-driven development of their unique bacterial chassis, the company has the potential to produce hundreds of new products, including complex, high value chemicals.
Fishmeal is an essential ingredient in many forms of aquaculture, especially in the shrimp industry. ... [+]
2.NovoNutrients
NovoNutrients is another synbio company aiming big, while tackling three great global problems simultaneously - producing a sustainable replacement for fishmeal for the good of the climate, the wild fish in our oceans and global food security.
Fishmeal is an essential ingredient in many forms of aquaculture, especially in the shrimp industry. However, due to the effects of overfishing and the relative hike in price of fishmeal as a consequence, the industry - which is important socioeconomically as well as for food security - could suffer.
NovoNutrients’ novel biotech solution involves microbes that convert not just CO2, but even toxic waste products such as hydrogen sulfide and cyanide, into a protein called Novomeal. Generated through the gas fermentation of industrial waste including cement plants and oil refineries, Novomeal has the power to transform aquaculture - an industry that requires 400 billion wild fish to be caught and ground up into fishmeal each year.
The grand aim of the company, which moved a step closer to fruition with $300 000 funding from the US Department of Energy this year, is to entirely replace fishmeal used for aquaculture with their sustainable alternative, working “to capture carbon, not fish”.
3.String Bio
String Bio wants to “revolutionise how waste flows through our ecosystem”, specifically methane. Otherwise known as natural gas, methane is many times more potent than CO2 in causing global warming, and makes up over 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions primarily due to the belches of cows, leaks in the gas supply, and release from piles of festering landfill.
This year, the Indian-based company secured funding from a range of European and Asian investors, including India’s largest crude oil and natural gas company, Oil & Natural Gas Corporation.
4.Carbo Culture
A 2018 IPBES report concluded that 75% of the world’s land areas are degraded, which costs the global economy up to $10 trillion in the loss of vital ecosystem services, including food production. Timely, then, that California-based Carbo Culture last year received $550,000 of seed funding for their bioengineering solution that aims to “clean the air, to heal the soils”.
Carbo Culture is sequestering three tons of atmospheric CO2 into each ton of their biochar - a substance that can be mixed into earth and does not just sequester carbon, but can replenish soils by promoting nutrient and water storage, as well as improving microbial activity.
The Finnish company uses waste biomass, such as walnut shells, and a thermocycler that can be deployed where it is needed. As co-founder and CEO of the company, Henrietta Kekäläinen said in her recent blog, “Our “manufacturing 2.0” approach means that we can transport our agile little factory right next to the deposit of the waste, and on a global scale, this means anywhere.”
Considering that soil stores more carbon than all of the Earth’s biomass and the atmosphere combined, and is necessary to produce 95% of our food, this is a solution that we can all get on board with.
Fertilizer run-off is also a major cause of eutrophication in our rivers, lakes and seas, ... [+]
5.Pivot Bio
Sticking with soil, agriculture production would be lagging far behind global demand for food if it were not for the large scale adoption of fertilizers that permit high yielding crop varieties to flourish.
Fertilizer run-off is also a major cause of eutrophication in our rivers, lakes and seas, contributing to dead zones such as the 7,000 square mile stretch of oxygen depleted water in the Gulf of Mexico. To sharpen the environmental blow, nitrous oxide emitted from excess fertiliser application is also hundreds of times more potent than CO2 when it comes to trapping heat in our warming globe.
The world needs a more sustainable alternative - and Pivot Bio have the solution: a clean alternative to synthetic fertilizers using bacteria that naturally take nitrogen from the air and fix it directly into the roots of our crops. This is nothing new to nature, and there are plenty of bacteria that already do this in abundance in friendly associations with peas and other legumes. Now, Pivot Bio are making beneficial root-microbe relationships work with our most nitrogen-hungry cereals, such as corn.
Not only do Pivot’s microbes get in and around corn roots, they provide nitrogen throughout their growth cycle - giving a constant daily dose that allows farmers to use less synthetic fertilizer. A continuing success story that can help reduce the 5% of greenhouse gas emissions caused by synthetic fertilisers, Pivot Bio’s strong 2019 season is set to expand a further five million corn acres across more than 20 states in 2020.
The Age of Synthetic Biology
The last ten years have seen over $12 billion of investment in synthetic biology, a field which has the capacity to disrupt the most polluting sectors, from food and agriculture through to consumer goods and chemicals and materials.
In a world where nature wails under the strain of industrial pollution, the companies driving the growth in synthetic biology do not await the ruin - but are leading us into a future in which we harness what nature gave us, adapt it to solve new challenges, and thrive on the results.
That future will be the Age of Synthetic Biology.
Please note: I am the founder of SynBioBeta, the innovation network for the synthetic biology industry. Some of the companies that I write about are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference (click here for a full list of sponsors).
