Andy Blair: Upflow Business and Innovation Director on the use of geothermal emissions to create animal feed

Geothermal emissions of methane and CO2 could soon be put to good use. 

Work is underway in Rotorua to create livestock feed from the gasses in world-first research that could net the country $500 million by 2045. 

The feed would be created from protein rich biomass, produced when microorganisms feed off greenhouse gas emissions captured from geothermal power stations. 

Upflow Business and Innovation Director Andy Blair told Mike Hosking that they’re testing if the system is scalable, to see how they can make it economically viable and sustainable for the commercial market. 

The feed is unlikely to be bulk food, he said, but additives instead, since it’s not a cheap thing to produce. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From the Bright Ideas department. We got methane and CO
two could be harnessed to create livestock feed. How good
is this? World first? Research, upflow, business and innovation are
into this. The director is Andy Blair, who's with this. Andy,
very good morning to you. So you plug it into
the geothermal system with your microbes and it just grows?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Is that it?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Or Am I just a bit thick?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
No, you're pretty much bang on, Mike. So basically, we
take the guesses that come from c simial power stations
and plart them into these bugs and they make a
single cell protein.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Can you see it happen?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yep, we've already made We've already made it. We've made
the biomass and it exists, and yeah, it's happening.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
And so what are you looking for scalability now?

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, so we're doing we're doing that test for scalability.
So how do we make it economically viable in a
big enough and a more meaningful way for a commercial
market to take it and make it sustainable?

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Okay, So if you plug it in when you leave
the office, you'd leave the office at six because you're
not to work from home, or I can tell so
you leave the office at six, you plug it in.
When you come back the next morning, how much you got?

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, so it's not like that it's been plugged in
constantly to a power station and they just multiply. The
only thing that stops them from growing is lack of
food or the size of the vessel that we put
them in. So they'll just keep multiplying by as much
food that we give them.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, but how quickly? I mean, like you put a
sack load of food in, do you get a sack
load of biomass or ten to biomass or tea stone.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
It's like replicating like for thousands and thousands of times
over w Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, they grow really rapidly. And
that's why it's such a cool technology. Biotech is so
cool is because it's not constrained by normal sort of
multiplication rates that we see in other spaces.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Okay, do the animals like it? Will they eat it?
Do you know?

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Well, we've done some early testing on mice which it
and think it's just as good as the food they're eating.
But we're also working on which markets, which animal market
we're targeting, and we'll have to do that sort of
do they like it? Do they not like it? But
it performed really well in the early testing that we did.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
What's it cost you to make a sackload? Do you know?
Is it tenths of cents? Hundreds of dollars?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, it's all about dollars per kg. And we're trying
to figure that out in this step as well. So
we don't think it's going to be bulk food. We
think it's going to be meaningful little components of its
additives to feed because it's not cheap and it will
take a while to become competitive with normal bulk food rates.

(02:40):
So we'll be targeting the sort of high value stuff first.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
That's so exciting. When do you reckon? You're going to
give it to a cow?

Speaker 2 (02:48):
We reckon in about ten to twelve years, will be
commercially operating and feeding it like you'll be able to
dial it up in.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Order some and you are one hundred percent certain of
this or you're still we'll see how it goes. Face.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Well, we've made we've made the biomass. We know we
can make one hundred percent to make biomass. Now we
just need to figure out can we make it commercially viable? Right?

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Well, that's exciting. Hey, tell me about your kings on
or tomorrow. Andy.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah, I'm getting an officer for New Zealand Order of
Merit for services to the GFM or industry and to women.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Isn't that incredible? So you're going to Government House in Auckland.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yes, I'm getting all drew stuff and I'm going to
turn up and get a medal, which is really exciting.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
I'll beat you. It is well done. You nice to
talk to. You, appreciate it very much and go well
with it, Andy Blair, who's Upflow Business and Innovative Director.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
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