Green future: does industrial biotechnology hold the answer to a low carbon world?

A few days ago, the Coca-Cola Company took a step closer to its goal of producing the "bottle of the future" when it unveiled the 'PlantBottle', a plastic bottle made partially from plants.

At the launch, Scott Vitters, director of Sustainable Packaging at The Coca-Cola Company described the PlantBottle as a "significant development in sustainable packaging innovation" that was helping to move the world's largest beverage company closer to its "vision of zero waste with a material that lessens our carbon footprint and is also recyclable."

The PlantBottle has been made through a process that turns sugar cane and molasses – a by-product of sugar cane – into a main component for PET plastic. Crucially, it reduces the need for petroleum, an non-renewable resource, in Coca-Cola's plastic bottles. The company said the new bottle could reduce carbon emissions by up to 25 per cent compared with petroleum-based PET plastic bottles and it was exploring the use of other plant materials for future generations of the PlantBottle.

The use of biological resources, including plants, algae, marine life, fungi and micro-organisms, for producing everything from packaging, to face creams to electricity, is called industrial biotechnology (IB). Indeed the possibilities of IB for processing materials, chemicals and energy sustainably seem so endless that some are calling for it to be put at the heart of an established low carbon economy.

Last week in the UK, the industry-led Industrial Biotechnology Innovation and Growth Team (IB-IGT) published its report setting out a vision for how IB should fit into the UK economy by 2025 – along with its recommendations to Government and industry on the steps needed to make this vision a reality.

It is the IB-IGT’s contention that IB provides a sustainable, commercially viable route out of dependence on fossil fuels. It says IB is also vital for maintaining UK competitiveness in global markets, where it believes bio-based systems and processes are becoming increasingly important. It suggests that the IB could be worth between £4 billion and £12 billion to the UK economy by 2025.

Ian Shott, chairman of the IB-IGT, put it like this: “Our vision sees the power and benefits of IB being fully evidenced across the UK chemical and chemical-using industries, driven by coherent manufacturing, skills, environment and technology policies, judicious investment, and a sense of urgency, to deliver innovation, jobs and prosperity."

The IB-IGT’s vision has been endorsed by Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Peter Mandelson, who said: "The Government welcomes this report, and it comes at an opportune time as the Government focuses on building a low carbon economy. Industrial biotechnology will be one of the strongest driving forces behind the world's low carbon revolution, offering businesses the capability to develop and use less carbon intensive products and processes, whilst also reducing costs and opening up new, emerging and established markets."

Initial feedback from those involved in IB seems broadly supportive of the report’s vision, which details a number of barriers to IB realising its full potential and comes up with no less than 21 recommendations which it hopes will overcome these barriers and "ensure the UK is best placed to translate the opportunities IB presents into innovations, jobs and prosperity”.

Steve Elliott, chief executive of the Chemical Industries Association (CIA), which contributed to the report, is one of those urging the Government to put its money where its mouth is. He says: "This report is ideally timed to capitalise on the Government's commitment to rebalance the UK economy with hi-tech manufacturing – IB is at the heart of that commitment [...] We look forward to playing our part in delivering the recommendations and, in particular, supporting the delivery of demonstrator projects to help commercialise IB on a significant scale. However, industry can only do this with the support of Government, so I urge it to honour its commitment to hi-tech manufacturing by implementing the recommendations."

The National Non-Food Crops Centre, another contributor to the report, takes a similar view. Chemicals and healthcare manager, Dr Adrian Higson, says: “This report is just a starting point. The Government has to respond with action and funding. What the UK really needs is funding for quality demonstration plants so we can turn innovation into products people can buy.”

Some outside the IB sector – notably the environmental groups – question whether this isn’t all jumping the gun, however; whether the wider case for going all-out for IB has really been made, particularly in terms of its environmental impact. Biofuels may have lower carbon emissions than fossil fuels, but if they require more land for crops, they can lead to deforestation or questions over food security, for example.

Dr Garry Staunton, technology director of the Carbon Trust, who sat on the steering group of the IB–IGT, acknowledges this dilemma: “The land use debate is an incredibly complex one and it is not for the Carbon Trust to say that it fully understands how any technology, IB based or otherwise, impacts on land use. For this reason we follow the work of people like the Renewable Fuel Agency and others as they explore what makes a transport biofuel ‘sustainable’. Once such work on biofuels is complete we would expect the IB industry to incorporate the learnings and as such minimise the potential for detrimental impact on things such as food security, deforestation etc.”

Charlie Kronick, senior policy advisor at Greenpeace, has a particular problem with agricultural biotechnology. “Active biotech crops – whether herbicide resistant or herbicide expressing – have already created significant environmental problems in Canada and Argentina [...] There is a pretty robust case that their environmental and social impacts are pretty extensive and difficult to control.

“Which leads you back to the question of ‘what is it that we have them for? What is the thing that they are supposed to do and are they actually delivering on that? If it’s about reducing pesticide use or improving food security or improving the output of industrial agriculture, then they pretty much fail on all counts.”

Kronick is keen not to tar all biotechnology with the same brush – he says he has no problems with algaes being used for cosmetics or even some types of biofuels – but he does question whether IB really has a central role to play in  a low carbon future. “The important decisions we make on climate change are the decisions we make in the next five to 10 years. The role of technologies that aren’t going to be commercially viable until 2020, 2030 or 2040 is highly questionable,” he says.

“The main issue we have is that there are far more questions than answers about biotechnology and every time you try to drill down into a particular application, they never quite deliver what they said they would.”

According to the Carbon Trust’s Dr Garry Staunton the report was prepared in the "full knowledge that the environmental benefits of IB need to be proven. Indeed, one of the recommendations of the report is that the lifecycle carbon emissions of IB products should be calculated against PAS 2050 – a standard that the Carbon Trust developed in conjunction with BSI and Defra.”

Whatever the views on either side, the report has to be a welcomemove  in further stimulating discussion around whether and how the UK can further develop and exploit its biotechnology strengths and play its part in a future low carbon economy.

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