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Comment by rozab | Hacker News Reader

> Preliminary lab tests show that synthetic starch is about 8.5 times more efficient than starch produced by conventional agriculture. Under the condition of sufficient energy supply and current technical parameters, the annual production of starch of 1 cubic meter bioreactor is equivalent to the annual production of starch of 5 mu (0.33 hectare) of corn in China.

Ah of course, leaving aside the small issue of energy use this process does indeed seem very efficient

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I suppose the upside could be that you _could_ imagine (if, of course, the whole thing was efficient enough) a process where you use low-carbon electricity (nuclear or poorly-timed renewables) to power CO2 capture from air, and then turn the CO2 into starch, and then maybe turn the starch into something edible ? (I don't have enough grain of salts to take my own words here...)

It's a huge stretch to image that being competitive with conventional agriculture. Still, just imagining a situation where we could use electricity to turn CO2 into food...

There may be places where you would want access to starches, agriculture is not feasible, transportation costs are prohibitive, but you also have abundant power. I’m struggling to think of a place that meets all those criteria.

On a spacecraft with solar panels?

The desert maybe?

If it's really more efficient than plants, then it would make sense to have solar panels combined with this process also in places where agriculture is feasible and there are no issues with transportation costs.

Mars?

there's not much co2 on Mars

Near Arctic regions like Lappland where I live fit the bill:

* plenty of hydro power (which is why there’s data centers and battery recycling);

* agriculture isn’t possible outside with no sun and meters of snow; there’s greenhouses, including opaque ones with purely electric lighting but it’s expensive;

* transport by road is common, but harder in winter without fossil fuels and battery uncomfortable at -40ºC/F.

Any local activity could generate CO2, but the biggest existing one is paper mills.

Leaving aside the future improvements(50% larger plants) in agriculture as well:

https://futurism.com/the-byte/splice-human-gene-potatoes

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