The world’s largest Coca-Cola bottler, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), and University of California Berkeley (UCB) are collaborating on new technology to convert air into sugar, with potential spin-offs for PET packaging conversion.
Investment from CCEP’s innovation investment platform CCEP Ventures into UCB’s Peidong Yang Research Group will fund foundational research on the production of sugar from CO2 on site and at an industrial level, with expectation of future investments to drive scale – from lab to pilot phase.
Professor Peidong Yang said air to sugar conversion was a “bold scientific vision”.
“Air to sugar conversion could significantly impact our ability to preserve the natural world… that would bring immediate environmental benefits, fundamentally transforming the production and distribution of goods across the world,” Yang said.
While plants and ocean microbes use sunlight to turn CO2 into sugars for energy through photosynthesis, humans don’t have that ability. The technology – and the development of lab scale prototypes – could make the generation of essential raw and packaging materials more sustainable in the long-term, reducing some of the largest CO2 contributors in supply chains and saving costs on materials, transportation, and logistics.
“We are pleased to be working with CCEP Ventures on research that could make a significant impact on our ability to create a more sustainable future,” Yang said.
The Peidong Yang Group has previously received a prize from NASA for a viable prototype for conversion of CO2 to sugar for potential use on long-haul space missions.
Creating products out of air is a growing area for food tech. Finnish company Solar has been developing protein from air since 2017, when it was spun off the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and LUT University.
Last year, Solar announced it was building its first industrial-scale production facility t scale and commercialise its product Solein.
The company has demonstrated Solein’s use in around 20 products, from plant-based burgers to dairy-free beverages. CEO Pasi Vainikka said, “Tectonic shifts are happening at our dinner tables”.
Its process involves microbes being fed with CO2, hydrogen, and oxygen, and then given small amounts of nutrients.
For CCEP, the project reflects the potential such innovation could have in the company reaching its goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
Agricultural ingredients, including sugar, account for around a quarter of CCEP’s carbon footprint. According to CCEP, this technology could not only reduce emissions associated with sugar manufacturing processes but also help optimise land usage and population growth reduces the amount of arable land.
Head of CCEP Ventures Craig Twyford said the investment platform was keen to fund foundational technologies that are finding innovative solutions to industry challenges.
“We’re excited to be involved in this project that could lead the industry in the development of transformational technology capable of converting CO2 into more complex, usable goods,” Twyford said.
CCEP said that in the longer-term, the technology could also make the conversion of CO2 into PET plastic more efficient by reducing the need for crude oil in the manufacturing process and significantly lowering costs.
