Electrifying the Cow

Climate experts agree it’s essential to rapidly electrify as many industries as possible. Electrify cars. Electrify homes. Electrify everything. With renewables becoming more advanced and commercially viable by the day, the sooner we get crucial sectors hooked up to the grid, the sooner we can make the transition away from fossil fuels and eventually achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions. But given the huge emissions that come from animal agriculture (especially beef), innovation of this kind must extend to the food industry. That's exactly what we're doing at SCiFi. In our pursuit to transform space with cultivated beef products, we're figuring out how to electrify the cow.?

Last year, we conducted a life cycle analysis comparing the impact of our cultivated beef burgers vs. traditional beef burgers. The study concluded that compared to a typical beef patty, producing our patties generated 87% less greenhouse gas emissions, required 39% less energy, had 90% less influence on land use, and used 96% less water. Furthermore, while the study did not account for the use of renewable energy, it concluded that if SCiFi used fully renewable fuel sources to power manufacturing (as we already do in our R&D facility and pilot plant), the impact difference would be even more profound.?

Full transparency, the analysis was conducted by OSU, an institution that we donated to, so in order to validate our findings in the most objective way possible, we put the study through rigorous peer review by academic journals. After a lengthy, but in our opinion, vital process, the study was accepted for publication by the open-access academic journal Sustainability. You can read the full study here.?

To us, the findings are a critical indicator that cultivated meat is the best pathway toward more sustainable beef. Livestock production is responsible for about 14.5% of global emissions. Methane, produced naturally by cows, is a chief concern. Cows are currently responsible for about 31% of total US methane emissions, a sobering number considering that methane is 25x more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. Luckily, methane disappears from the atmosphere much faster than other greenhouse gases, so cutting our methane emissions is one of the fastest acting climate change mitigation options we have. Our electrified process involves growing beef cells in bioreactors that are quite similar to brewer’s vats, and produces no methane at all.?

Some have argued that a shift away from factory farming toward pasture-raising and grass-feeding will curb the impact, but a study conducted by Oxford University found that the emissions benefits of allowing cows to grass feed do not offset the emissions generated by raising cattle overall, especially if one is trying to produce at scale. Plus, the cattle industry requires so much more land than other animal industries, which, on top of its intrinsic methane emissions, is driving deforestation and adding to its total emissions impact. It’s currently estimated that pasture accounts for 80% of all of the deforested sections of the Amazon, and total land usage is an issue that better rearing techniques simply cannot circumvent.?

Shifting toward plant-based meat alternatives has been important in counteracting beef’s impact. But while these alternatives are good, less energy-intensive solutions, the numbers indicate that plant-based solutions alone will not diminish our global obsession with beef. Despite high-profile social campaigns such as “Meatless Mondays” or the “20% Less Meat” movement, global demand for beef is still rising every year. In fact, with more and more people exiting poverty and gaining economic access to meat, demand is expected to double by 2050. Whether the reasons are nutritional, cultural, or based solely on flavor, eating real meat simply remains a top, unavoidable priority for many people.?

To us, that means the only way we can curb the negative environmental impact of meat production is to create real beef in a revolutionary new way. This is precisely what we’re doing; our cultivated meat-process takes cattle rearing out of the beef equation, and this life-cycle analysis is the first to show that ours is just the method needed to create a more habitable, electrified future.?