Transition to cellular agriculture reduces agriculture land use and greenhouse gas emissions but increases demand for critical materials
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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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Authors
El Wali, Mohammad
Rahimpour Golroudbary, Saeed
Kraslawski, Andrzej
Tuomisto, Hanna L.
Date
2024-01-31
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Language
en
Pages
17
Series
Communications Earth & Environment, Volume 5, issue 1
Abstract
Cellular agriculture, that is, the production of cultured meat and microbial proteins, has been developed to provide food security for a growing world population. The use of green energy technologies is recommended to ensure the sustainability of changing traditional agriculture to a cellular one. Here, we use a global dynamic model and life-cycle assessment to analyze scenarios of replacing traditional livestock products with cellular agriculture from 2020 to 2050. Our findings indicate that a transition to cellular agriculture by 2050 could reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 52%, compared to current agriculture emissions, reduce demand for phosphorus by 53%, and use 83% less land than traditional agriculture. A maximum 72% replacement of livestock products with cellular agriculture using renewable energy is possible based on the 2050 regional green energy capacities. A complete transition can be achieved but requires 33% of the global green energy capacities in 2050. Further, the accelerated demand for critical materials will not exceed their primary production capacities, except for tellurium. We conclude that a transition to cellular agriculture is possible with environmental benefits and provide a benchmark to study different alternatives to animal-based diets.Description
This work was supported by the Research Funds at the University of Helsinki and the ‘Cultured Meat in the Post-animal Bioeconomy’ project (no. 201802185) funded by the KONE Foundation. We would like to thank Dr. Natasha Järviö for the valuable discussions on the production processes of microbial proteins and cell-cultured recombinant proteins.
Keywords
Energy transition, Critical materials, Cellular agriculture, Land use, Greenhouse gas emissions, Natural resources, Sustainable developemnt, Food supply chain
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Citation
El Wali, M, Rahimpour Golroudbary, S, Kraslawski, A & Tuomisto, H L 2024, ' Transition to cellular agriculture reduces agriculture land use and greenhouse gas emissions but increases demand for critical materials ', Communications Earth & Environment, vol. 5, no. 1, 61 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01227-8