While people become increasingly aware that a plant-based diet has a smaller environmental impact than a meat-based one, few know that the most considerable ecological impact comes from animal feed. Deep Branch Biotechnology has developed a new kind of animal feed made from carbon dioxide (CO2), which “represents a new way of generating more sustainable animal feeds.”
A project, led by Deep Branch, in Drax Group’s Selby power station in Yorkshire – which turns CO2 into animal feed – has recently received significant funding from the UK government. This ‘carbon recycling’ initiative will reduce emissions, prevent further deforestation, and provide sustainable food for fish and poultry farms.
The main ingredients typically used in animal feed include soy, grains, or fishmeal – all of which can lead to devastating environmental impacts. This new process, however, takes CO2 from industrial emissions and uses it as an energy source for microbes that generate a single-cell protein designed for animal feed.
The project has been awarded a little over $4 million (£3 million) from the UK government to test whether the scheme will work on a commercial scale and the overall carbon emissions.
In 2017, the WWF found that up to 75% of global maize and soy production was grown to feed animals, mainly poultry and pigs. However, as diets worldwide lean towards higher meat consumption, animal feed production poses a significant threat to biodiversity since the land has to be cleared to grow more crops.
Deep Branch has partnered with Drax Power Station – the UK’s largest power station that supplies 5% of the country’s electricity needs – to have a source of industrial CO2 for the process. Drax has recently converted to burning renewable biomass instead of coal.
The power station plans to become carbon negative by 2030, and projects like this one that captures the CO2 it emits contribute to this goal. Drax has also experimented with using its captured CO2 to make plastic items.
Deep Branch and Drax Group are part of the Nottingham-based React-First consortium made up of 10 industry and academic groups that received the $4 million (£3 million) funding to turn CO2 into animal feed. The consortium is fully “committed to tackling the global climate crisis and the goal of achieving neutral/negative carbon emissions.”
REACT-FIRST includes UK supermarket Sainsbury’s, Nottingham Trent University, and other agriculture technology businesses.
