28 May 2026

Primordial Soup for the Soul: CO₂ to Protein

Presented by Binhong

Main source: Katharine Greco, ARPA-E Fellow, Primordial Soup for the Soul: CO₂ to protein

Supplementary reading: Greco, K. V. “Hot potato: Force-multiplying technological innovation for food and agricultural decarbonization,” MIT Science Policy Review, 2024

Summary

• The presentation argues that conventional agriculture, especially animal protein production, wastes large amounts of energy.
• Climate change and population growth may make traditional food production less reliable.
• CO₂-to-protein offers a possible alternative: using CO₂, renewable energy, H₂ and NH₃ to produce proteins or amino acids.
• The broader vision is to decouple food production from land-intensive agriculture.
• Protein is highlighted as the most difficult macronutrient to synthesize, making it a high value but challenging target.

Key Results

• Energy inefficiency: Current agriculture loses large amounts of energy between sunlight, crops, livestock and human food.
• Food security pressure: Future population growth and climate disruption may challenge conventional food systems.
• Three technical pathways:
  1. Microbial biosynthesis
  2. Enzymatic catalysis
  3. Electrochemical catalysis
• Potential impact: CO₂-to-protein could greatly reduce land use and emissions compared with conventional animal protein.
• Policy relevance: Greco’s later article argues that these early-stage technologies need stronger public R&D support to become scalable.

Discussion Questions

1. Is CO₂-to-protein mainly a food technology, a carbon-utilization technology, or an energy technology?
2. Which pathway seems most promising: microbial, enzymatic or electrochemical?
3. Should the first target product be human food, animal feed, amino acids or emergency food?

Attachments

• Handout