Hydrogen

Solein leaves the lab

Solar Foods is already running a factory on hydrogen, air, and electricity. The early line beat its own forecast.

22 September 2026 · 5 minute read · after Michael Le Page

In Finland, Solar Foods grows a bacterium on hydrogen and carbon dioxide and dries it into Solein, a protein-rich powder. The hydrogen comes from splitting water. The CO₂ can come from the air. The electricity has to be renewable or the climate math collapses.

Co-founder Pasi Vainikka told New Scientist: “It has scaled really well. It’s almost five times more productive than we thought early on.” The company’s aim is a plant around 6,400 tonnes a year, made for a few dollars a kilogram and sold for more than twice that.

A few thousand tonnes is a speck next to the world’s protein. It is also no longer a rendering. The machine exists. It met a number. The number was better than the one in the model.

Hydrogen is an awkward lunch. Remko Boom at the University of Copenhagen put it plainly: hydrogen hardly dissolves in water, so microbes struggle to catch it. Acetate, made by electrolyzing CO₂, does dissolve. That is why several groups now treat acetate as the better spoon, even while Solar Foods proves the hydrogen route can run.

Neither route is a diet. Solein is an ingredient — flour-adjacent, not a harvest festival. The product question is whether bakers, feed mills, and food companies will put a quiet powder in the recipe if the powder is cheap and the land stays a forest.

Primary source: How turning electricity directly into food could help save the planet, New Scientist. Commentary, not a reprint.