The industrial biotech startup is working on bringing a novel protein to market — one it says will offer a nutritious, sustainable alternative to animal-derived proteins. The product, a single-cell protein it’s branding Solein, is essentially an edible bacteria; a single-cell microbe grown using gas fermentation.

The problem Solar Foods is aiming to tackle is that the environmental costs of livestock-based meat production are indisputably massive — whether you’re talking unsustainable land and water use; climate-heating emissions and pollution; or animal welfare concerns. But what if you could produce billions of nutritious meals without the need to deforest huge swathes of land and slaughter masses of livestock to produce the food? What if humanity could feed itself and stop consuming the planet in the process?