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Plus cheese and eggs, if you want to go all the way.
It was burrito night — I had some tortillas, salsa, guacamole and red onion in my refrigerator, but all our meat was still frozen, and I didn’t have any beans handy. So I did what any climate reporter with an interest in food systems would do and grabbed a pack of meatless “carne asada” I’d picked up out of curiosity and threw it into the mix. The end result was more “huh” than “wow,” but it held its own — with a little help from some hot sauce.
Growing, raising, processing and transporting food is responsible for roughly a quarter of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, nearly 60% of which comes from meat production, according to one estimation. If you're concerned about your personal carbon impact, eating less meat is probably on your to-do list. But what if you still like a carne asada burrito? Thankfully, there are plenty of companies working on satisfying your cravings, no animals involved.
There are lots of other food system concerns that won’t make it into this guide — things like agricultural livelihoods, water use, and animal well-being. But if you’re curious about how fake meats work, what they taste like, and their emissions impact, here’s what you’ll want to know.
Ben Kelley, owner and proprietor of Kelley Farms Kitchen, a vegan restaurant in Harpers Ferry, WV. Ben and his wife Sondra started Kelley Farms after going vegan themselves more than a decade ago. The cafe offers a mix of housemade and commercially available meat alternatives.
Ismael Montanez, the program manager at University of California Berkeley’s Alt Meat Lab, where he’s focused on food and sustainability broadly. He is co-founder and former CTO of plant-based lamb company Black Sheep Foods and eats both meat and plant-based replacements.
Andrea Cecchin, senior agriculture and carbon researcher at HowGood, a sustainability ratings company. Cecchin told me he and his family limit the amount of meat they eat but are focused on a wider plant based diet.
It’s a multi-trillion dollar question, frankly. While the worldwide food system is far more complex than individual consumer choices, shifts in demand for food products, especially among higher-income individuals, have created changes, such tripling the price of quinoa during a boom in its popularity in mid-2010s. The U.S. and China’s growing middle classes also drove a spike in pork demand, only to have that growth slow and reverse in the past few years over health concerns.
The plant-based meat alternatives currently available at your grocery store may be highly processed, but they’re different from the cultivated or “lab-grown” meat coming from a new batch of food companies that seek to “grow” meat from scratch on the cellular level. In theory, this would create direct replacements for things like steaks or fish without actually requiring us to raise actual animals. Almost all of these products are still in the research and development stage, however, and none are currently commercially available in the U.S.
Let’s not mince words: There is no such thing as carbon-neutral beef. How to reduce cattle’s climate impact is an area of active research, encompassing supplements and dietary changes, breeding programs to create animals that process food more efficiently, and even methane-sucking gas masks. There are also ranchers committed to using specific grazing techniques that encourage extra retention of soil carbon, thereby offsetting emissions from cows, but “the science is not there yet” on the scale of sequestration needed for fully carbon-neutral meat, Cecchin says. “Climate-friendly” or “low-carbon” meat labels have been criticized for a lack of data transparency and only represent a 10% reduction in beef emissions overall.
The process of making plant-based mock meats is basically the reverse of their animal version, Montanez explained. While meat is made by processing animals into specific cuts or parts, plant-based replacements use protein-packed flours and other ingredients to build the “meat” back up.
Almost all fake red meat products will have a smaller greenhouse gas impact than their animal versions, Cecchin explained. Compared to a beef burger, the alternatives “really bring down the carbon footprint — the amount of water we need to use, and the amount of land that we use” per unit of food. But for other products, the savings are less clear. Chicken, for instance, has a much lower footprint, meaning replacements have to compete against a “very efficient industry and a very efficient meat.”
Processing details are rarely public, making it difficult to declare other meat replacements automatic emissions winners. “It’s really company by company, and could even be year by year as processing efficiencies change,” Cecchin said, adding that he hopes more companies will show clear evidence of their total emissions, including being specific about what they are comparing against.
Fake animal products are also not the same nutritionally as actual animal products, in ways that can be positive or negative depending on your specific dietary needs. An allergy to soy or wheat gluten would immediately knock out a good portion of these options, and my carne asada came with a warning to anyone “sensitive” to fungi.
There are generally more carbs, less fat, and more fiber in substitutes compared to meat, but protein levels can vary widely, and sodium levels can be high (e.g. Impossible burgers have just as much fat and more salt than a 80% lean beef burger of the same size, though zero cholesterol). As with any processed or prepared food, a look at the nutritional label is well worth it.
The experts all enjoyed the big-name beef replacements — Cecchin even said he has chosen Impossible and Beyond patties over regular burgers while eating out. If you have a little more time, though, Kelley said to skip the fast food fake burgers and make them yourself. Making good tasting meat replacements isn’t all that different from cooking meat itself: spices, technique and how it integrates into a meal makes all the difference. This is the case whether he’s using Impossible beef on the restaurant griddle or hand-making a black bean and chickpea patty. “Just like a raw piece of chicken,” he said, “it's about how you cook it.”
Everyone I spoke to said most breaded chicken replacements match their animal versions pretty well — Montanez even called them “most consistently tasty” than their actual meat equivalents, which for him was enough to justify the slight additional cost. He said he thinks Impossible’s chicken nuggets are the “most convincing” — although he also cautioned that he doesn’t eat a lot of breaded meat products in the first place.
Morningstar Farms’ Chik Patty has been a go-to at-home lunch in my house for nearly three decades, primarily because of that consistency and ease of preparation. (The “buffalo” flavor is by far the best, in my opinion.) Kelley uses Gardein’s Chick’n on one of their most popular sandwiches at the restaurant — they’re a big fan of the company and product.
Don’t expect a lot of options for raw chicken alternatives, however. Montanez suspects the economics of competing with relatively cheap meat isn’t attractive to companies, especially when prepared breaded versions, both animal and plant-based, are already popular.
“Emulating the flavor of American chicken is relatively easy and shouldn't be seen as a significant achievement,” Montanez said. “What’s truly interesting is creating a versatile analog that can withstand the same cooking conditions as real chicken.”
Kelley’s favorite meat replacement is Beyond’s bratwurst sausage, made with pea protein and avocado oil. He uses it in a variety of meals at his cafe, as well as to grill up at home, sometimes adding it to pasta.
Steak and other meats that include marbled fats have been a particularly tricky nut to crack for fake meat producers because the traditional extrusion process makes it difficult to capture fat alongside protein. Montanez told me Juicy Marbles has developed a process capable of doing both, which it’s used to create filet and loin products.
Montanez’s favorite fake bacon is only available in a vegan deli in Berkeley, California, but generally both he and Kelley haven’t found full bacon strips that really match the experience of eating bacon. “There's no way to hold it after you cook it without it drying out,” Kelley said. Instead, he likes using soy [bacon] crumbles in various dishes, including in his potato salad.
The pepperoni and other fermented charcuterie from Prime Roots is “quite impressive, even from a meat eater’s perspective,” Montanez told me. The company starts its process with koji, a strain of fungus that has been part of Japanese cuisine for hundreds of years, including in the product of soy sauces and sake.
The deli slices Kelley uses in sandwiches like reubens or Italian hoagies are made with seitan or a mix of seitan and soy, from a variety of companies. But the Tofurky brand (not just turkey) is one of their favorites. “We are always testing new recipes of our own and using reliable and ethical companies that we grew up loving,” he said.
Kelley has yet to be convinced by most seafood replacements, he told me. “All the seafood is kind of just the same as the chicken replacements,” he said. Instead, he uses unripe jackfruit – a common meat replacement with a stringy texture – hearts of palm, and spices to replicate crab cakes. Having an exact match isn’t always a priority for Kelley, who’d rather highlight an ingredient that serves as a replacement rather than calling it by its faux name. His lobster roll replacement is made with hearts of palm, but it’s not “vegan lobster” on his menu, it’s a “hearts of palm” roll.
Texture is a “very difficult thing in seafood,” Montanez said. “I haven't seen anything myself where it is 100% convincing,” but he points out companies like Impact Food that are making plant-based sushi without extrusion or fermentation, currently available in some New York and California restaurants.
Montanez also called out vegan cheese as a category that struggles to match its original, citing texture, not flavor, as the sticking point, especially when it needs to work in a multitude of different recipes. “You might see a vegan cheese that’s okay applied in pieces,” he said, “but it's only as good if you put it in pizza oven temperatures.” An exception to the rule for him is Climax Foods’ blue cheese, which almost pulled off a Judgment of Paris-like upset in a food competition this year before being removed from the running.
Montanez identified Quorn as a brand that’s not trying to replicate meat exactly, but tastes good on its own. The British company has a wide range of no-meat products that feel like they could have a home in a Tesco, from a vegan Yorkshire ham to mini sausage rolls to “picnic eggs.”
Approaches to fake meat taste fall on a spectrum. On one end are companies that try to replicate as closely as possible the taste, texture, and smell of some specific meat product — say, a chicken nugget. (Your personal mileage may vary when it comes to replicas of more complicated meat cuts such as steaks or pork chops.) On the other end are brands that offer a functional, hopefully flavorful replacement for meat in a meal but otherwise aren’t trying to fool anyone.
The former approach involves more materials science and chemistry, Montanez told me. For example, Impossible makes a soy version of a key molecule in meat known as heme and combines it with a carefully calibrated proportion of sugars, fats, and water to induce the Maillard reaction, the process that makes meat brown and form a crust. It’s possible to create a similar meaty flavor profile without heme (Impossible has a patent on their version), but they have their own complications.
“It’s those sugars reacting with the proteins and creating these molecules that ultimately result in a meaty aroma or flavor,” Montanez said.
Kelley Farm’s menu is a good example of the wider ingredient possibilities of meat replacements beyond this approach. In addition to Impossible patties, Beyond brats, and Gardein’s Chick’n, the restaurant also serves deli meat replacements made with seitan (basically textured wheat gluten); folded eggs made from mung beans; BBQ pulled pork made from jackfruit, which mimics that stringy texture naturally (I’ve had both Kelley Farms’ barbeque sandwich and commercial jackfruit BBQ versions and would happily eat either again); and a burger patty that’s their own mix of chickpeas and black beans.
It’s also worth noting that there is a more literal approach to eating a plant-based diet that’s already the standard in many other countries — that is, rather than replacing meat products with fake meat products, just eat more plants. If you feel like you’re missing out on protein, beans, lentils, tofu, and certain grains like quinoa, farro or teff, have high amounts.
Highly engineered meat substitutes are often more expensive than the animal products they are replacing, so if you’re struggling with hunger, have specific dietary requirements, anxiety around food, or an eating disorder, concerns about emissions shouldn’t even enter the picture.
For that matter, just reorienting your approach to eating meat saves a lot of carbon on its own. Kelley told me he reaches for meat replacements when he’s craving something specific, while Cecchin prefers meat alternatives when he’s eating out.
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A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.
2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.
Long Islanders, meanwhile, are showing up in support of offshore wind, and more in this week’s edition of The Fight.
Local renewables restrictions are on the rise in the Hawkeye State – and it might have something to do with carbon pipelines.
Iowa’s known as a renewables growth area, producing more wind energy than any other state and offering ample acreage for utility-scale solar development. This has happened despite the fact that Iowa, like Ohio, is home to many large agricultural facilities – a trait that has often fomented conflict over specific projects. Iowa has defied this logic in part because the state was very early to renewables, enacting a state portfolio standard in 1983, signed into law by a Republican governor.
But something else is now on the rise: Counties are passing anti-renewables moratoria and ordinances restricting solar and wind energy development. We analyzed Heatmap Pro data on local laws and found a rise in local restrictions starting in 2021, leading to nearly 20 of the state’s 99 counties – about one fifth – having some form of restrictive ordinance on solar, wind or battery storage.
What is sparking this hostility? Some of it might be counties following the partisan trend, as renewable energy has struggled in hyper-conservative spots in the U.S. But it may also have to do with an outsized focus on land use rights and energy development that emerged from the conflict over carbon pipelines, which has intensified opposition to any usage of eminent domain for energy development.
The central node of this tension is the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline. As we explained in a previous edition of The Fight, the carbon transportation network would cross five states, and has galvanized rural opposition against it. Last November, I predicted the Summit pipeline would have an easier time under Trump because of his circle’s support for oil and gas, as well as the placement of former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary, as Burgum was a major Summit supporter.
Admittedly, this prediction has turned out to be incorrect – but it had nothing to do with Trump. Instead, Summit is now stalled because grassroots opposition to the pipeline quickly mobilized to pressure regulators in states the pipeline is proposed to traverse. They’re aiming to deny the company permits and lobbying state legislatures to pass bills banning the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines. One of those states is South Dakota, where the governor last month signed an eminent domain ban for CO2 pipelines. On Thursday, South Dakota regulators denied key permits for the pipeline for the third time in a row.
Another place where the Summit opposition is working furiously: Iowa, where opposition to the CO2 pipeline network is so intense that it became an issue in the 2020 presidential primary. Regulators in the state have been more willing to greenlight permits for the project, but grassroots activists have pressured many counties into some form of opposition.
The same counties with CO2 pipeline moratoria have enacted bans or land use restrictions on developing various forms of renewables, too. Like Kossuth County, which passed a resolution decrying the use of eminent domain to construct the Summit pipeline – and then three months later enacted a moratorium on utility-scale solar.
I asked Jessica Manzour, a conservation program associate with Sierra Club fighting the Summit pipeline, about this phenomenon earlier this week. She told me that some counties are opposing CO2 pipelines and then suddenly tacking on or pivoting to renewables next. In other cases, counties with a burgeoning opposition to renewables take up the pipeline cause, too. In either case, this general frustration with energy companies developing large plots of land is kicking up dust in places that previously may have had a much lower opposition risk.
“We painted a roadmap with this Summit fight,” said Jess Manzour, a campaigner with Sierra Club involved in organizing opposition to the pipeline at the grassroots level, who said zealous anti-renewables activists and officials are in some cases lumping these items together under a broad umbrella. ”I don’t know if it’s the people pushing for these ordinances, rather than people taking advantage of the situation.”