The era of biosolutions
It's time to overcome some of our greatest challenges with solutions rooted in biology. It’s time for the era of biosolutions.
We’re facing record-breaking temperatures, extreme weather events and a growing population. And our natural resources are under extreme pressure. So how can we better balance our needs with our planet’s?
Across the world, changing lifestyles are impacting health. Unhealthy diets and high stress levels are key risk factors. So how can people balance modern lifestyles and healthier lives?
A billion years of experience.
And counting.
Microbes and enzymes are tiny but mighty agents of change. For billions of years, they’ve enabled transformation in all living things through microbiology.
We harness that power in our biosolutions to transform consumer products and make industrial and agricultural processes more sustainable and efficient.
Microbes transform our world with their enzymes
Find out how we use them in biosolutions to transform the way we all produce and consume.
With a growing population and with resources under massive pressure, we need solutions for a healthier planet. In our fields, factories and homes, biosolutions are transforming production and consumption. They’re unlocking more sustainable protein sources and helping farmers and food producers get more from less. At the same time they’re reducing the use of fossil-based resources, chemicals, energy and water.
If we made more use of just some biosolutions, we could cut CO2e emissions by up to 4.3 billion tonnes. That’s 8% of total global emissions. So just imagine what we could do with all biosolutions deployed in full across industry, agriculture and transport.
A healthy diet and quality sleep are crucial to ensure our health, wellbeing and quality of life. But modern life can make it difficult to eat well and get enough sleep. Many of us have too much sugar and too little fiber in our diets. And our brains are impacted by poor sleep and high stress levels.
We can navigate to better lifelong health with biosolutions. They enable delicious food and drink with less sugar and more fiber. They also have the potential to keep us calm in the face of stress, boost our immune systems, make our guts healthier, our breath fresher and our teeth and gums stronger. They could even help us enjoy a better night’s sleep.
Transitioning to low-carbon, sustainable growth could deliver global economic gains of $26 trillion through to 2030.
For every job created in industrial biotech, 4 additional jobs are supported in the overall economy.
Greening energy production and use could create 24 million jobs globally by 2030. All while protecting the current 1.2 billion jobs that rely on a healthy and stable environment.
Businesses are essential partners in the transition to a net-zero, nature-positive world with thriving societies, but we cannot do it alone. We need transformative policies and actions now. For people, the climate and nature.
- Ester Baiget, CEO, Novonesis
The solutions of the future already exist. They allow us to produce, consume and live with respect for both climate and nature.
However, to accelerate the transition towards these solutions, governments must enable framework conditions that support innovation, drive investments and scale-up as well as ensuring fast market access.
We call for concrete actions to help us all accelerate towards a climate neutral future:
Last year, coal, oil and gas received $7 trillion in subsidies – equivalent to 7% of global GDP. We need a level playing field.
Policymakers must remove unnecessary regulatory barriers for green technologies that hinder investments and speed to market.
Harmonized reporting standards can ensure comparability and show investors and customers how companies perform.
For more than a century we’ve been copying, engineering and improving the power of biology to solve problems across many industries and businesses. And there's still so much untapped potential in biology.
Get to know the biological change-makers that are delivering sustainable benefits for our world.
Enzymes are proteins that are used in many applications. They make very specific changes to substances using a phenomenon known as enzymatic catalysis. They improve a wide range of consumer products and industrial processes.
Microbes are a very successful lifeform. They outweigh humans, all other animals and insects combined and only plants account for more biomass than microbes. Beneficial microbes in our bodies are essential for our survival. They support digestion and help prevent invasion by harmful microbes.
When applied to crops, bacteria make nutrients in the soil more accessible and available. That makes the crops more robust and faster-growing. Beneficial microbes can also inhibit the growth of pathogens and mold to keep food and drinks fresh and safe for longer.
Functional proteins are food ingredients that bring benefits to human food. These benefits include improved taste, texture and nutritional value.
Food cultures are safe, live microorganisms. Through fermentation, cultures produce acids, alcohols and other biological compounds. These give food and drink desirable properties such as taste, color and texture as well as health and nutritional benefits. Yogurt and cheese are great examples of food cultures at work – they wouldn’t exist without cultures. Cultures can even make food safer by protecting and conserving it.
Probiotics are live microorganisms. Consuming enough of them may bring health benefits. They’ve been shown to support immune function, aid digestive health, support cognitive health and boost the metabolism.
Microorganisms can also provide benefits when they’re not live, in which case they’re called postbiotics. And when certain natural compounds like complex sugar structures act as stimulants for microorganisms, they’re called prebiotics. These can function as nutrition for gut microbiota and can even help suppress ‘bad’ bacteria.
Yeasts are single-celled eukaryotes. They’re essential to bread, beer and wine production. We can also harness their ability to ferment sugars into ethanol to produce biofuels.
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