Elysia is revolutionizing animal agriculture by creating crop plants with built-in methane elimination technology that every farmer can use. By making this solution affordable and easy to scale globally, Elysia enables the elimination of more carbon from the atmosphere than shipping, aviation, and deforestation combined—all without sacrificing any part of our diet.
FELLOW
Eli Hornstein
Eli Hornstein is a conservation biologist turned genetic engineer and the founder of Elysia, a startup engineering plants to combat methane emissions. Hornstein previously worked on sustainability biotech in plant microbiomes, biofuels, and alternative proteins and has spent years living around the world as a conservationist. Hornstein has a Ph.D. in plant biology from North Carolina State University and is an alum of Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Harvard Business School. He has been awarded numerous fellowships, including from the Smithsonian Institution, Fulbright, the National Science Foundation, and the Robertson Foundation.
TECHNOLOGY
Critical Need
Today, feeding the world's population comes at the expense of our future. Agriculture's high demands and carbon emissions are unsustainable and difficult to change due to its global, decentralized nature, where any failure could spell disaster for billions. Methane emissions from animal agriculture are a prime example of this challenge, contributing more to global warming than shipping, aviation, and deforestation combined. Eliminating methane from animal agriculture could remove gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere overnight, but this remains unfeasible because most livestock are beyond the reach of existing technical solutions.
Technology Vision
Elysia aims to develop technology to eliminate methane emissions from animal agriculture worldwide. Methane from livestock is primarily produced during digestion. Elysia addresses this by engineering common feed crops to include built-in methane suppression. This innovative approach integrates seamlessly into existing crop and production systems, eliminating the need for factory-made drugs or additives. It’s as simple as growing a seed—a solution farmers can adopt easily and cheaply.
Potential for Impact
Wherever Elysia's plants are adopted, they will halve the carbon emissions footprint of our most carbon-intensive foods. This technology integrates seamlessly into many familiar crops and spreads organically through existing supply chains and seed-saving practices, potentially reaching farmers worldwide within a few years. Since methane is short-lived in the atmosphere, the impact of using Elysia's technology can be measured with a simple thermometer. In just ten years, the reduction in climate change will be evident, and in 20 years, this technology alone could eliminate a full degree of warming from our world.
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