The Dirty Energy Secret On Your Plate

LAMONT, CA – AUGUST 12: The sun rises over the Kern Oil and Refining Co. refinery on August 12, 2004 near the town of Lamont, southeast of Bakersfield, California. High levels of air pollution and high temperatures are affecting the area this week with today’s high expected to reach 106 degrees. California’s Central Valley is one of the nation’s most important agricultural and oil producing areas. Mass food production has brought heavy use of chemicals, including pesticides that have sickened hundreds of area workers and residents. In 2002, the last year for which numbers are available, 172 million pounds of pesticides were used on California fields sickening 478 people as airborne chemicals drifted 39 times, according to the state Department of Pesticide Regulation. On May 2, a crew of 100 workers was caught in a drift of pesticide at nearby Arvin that made 19 of them sick, including a woman who was five months pregnant. This spring, state Sen. Dean Florez introduced a bill, the Pesticide Drift Exposure Response Act, to help pay for field workers’ medical care. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

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The U.S. is in the midst of a national health crisis rooted in food. Nearly 90% of healthcare spending goes toward treating chronic diseases – many of them linked to what Americans eat. Over 70% of adults are overweight or obese, and nearly one in three adolescents has prediabetes.¹

Modern nutrition debates increasingly focus on whole foods and protein quality. Yet food is more than a public health concern. It is also an energy and resource issue – and increasingly a systemic vulnerability. From fertilizers and farm machinery to processing plants, refrigeration and transport, nearly every calorie consumed is underpinned by energy-intensive infrastructure.

Globally, the food system accounts for roughly 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. More than half of this footprint is linked to livestock and deforestation, accelerating planetary tipping points. Beyond CO₂, food production places enormous pressure on water resources, biodiversity, nitrogen cycles and soil health.

These pressures don’t stop at production. They are amplified by how much food is ultimately wasted. Periods of peak consumption, such as the recent holiday season, make this particularly visible, with food waste and overconsumption temporarily spiking. But the underlying pattern is structural and persists year-round.

A Food System Under Pressure

Food systems today are under growing strain. In the U.S., one in seven people currently face food insecurity, according to Feeding America. Globally, the World Resources Institute warns of a 56% food gap by 2050 if production systems fail to keep up with rising demand. This mismatch is amplified by ecosystem degradation and climate volatility. In 2024, global wildfires burned an area equivalent to the size of Mexico, leaving millions of hectares of farmland degraded or unusable.

Meanwhile, the policy and market landscape is adding further pressure. Farmers faced falling crop prices, tighter trade conditions, labor shortages, and delays in modernizing farm equipment. These ripple effects are being felt globally, reinforcing the urgency of system-level transformation.²

No Silver Bullet: Decarbonizing Food Production Value Chain Requires Systemic Change

Unlike power generation or vehicle electrification, decarbonizing food production isn’t a matter of swapping one technology for another. Emissions are diffuse and largely embedded in Scope 3 activities – from fertilizers and feed to refrigeration, logistics and household consumption.³

From farm to fork, the system is built on biological, industrial, and economic interdependencies that make its decarbonization uniquely systemic. Progress, therefore, depends on stacking solutions rather than searching for a silver bullet. And while that complexity is a challenge, it is also one of the richest opportunities for clean tech innovation today.

Food as an Energy System

At its core, food production is an energy transformation process: converting sunlight into calories through photosynthesis. Decarbonizing the sector therefore begins by rethinking how energy is produced and used at farm and processing levels. With 42% of agriculture-related emissions linked to biomass and natural energy flows, energy-focused interventions are especially relevant.

Bioenergy systems are already playing a critical role. Biogas and biomethane installations convert manure, food waste, and crop residues into clean energy, reducing methane emissions in the process. Biomass gasification offers additional efficiency gains.

Solar power, particularly agrivoltaics, is becoming integral to modern farm infrastructure, allowing crops and solar panels to coexist while helping stabilize energy costs and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

With its land availability, strong rural infrastructure, and innovation capacity, the U.S. is uniquely positioned to scale these solutions. This is already visible in places like Texas, where farmers and landowners are increasingly adopting wind, solar and bioenergy, turning farms from passive energy users into active energy hubs.

From Clean Inputs to Healthy Soils

But energy is only one side of the equation. Resilience ultimately depends on how inputs shape soils and ecosystems.

Few agricultural inputs matter as much as fertilizer. Nitrogen fertilizers are essential to feeding the world, yet they remain one of the most energy-intensive parts of the food value chain, long reliant on fossil fuels. New low-carbon production routes can now sharply reduce emissions, decoupling fertilizer supply from fossil energy and strengthening food security.

From there, circularity determines whether those cleaner inputs are used efficiently or lost. Approaches like composting, digestate reuse, and biological crop protection help close nutrient loops. Smarter irrigation and drought-resilient crops further improve water efficiency, reinforcing soil ecosystems rather than depleting them.

This is where soil health becomes the system’s multiplier. One of the most promising tools is biochar: a carbon-rich material produced by heating biomass in low-oxygen conditions. When applied to soil, it improves fertility and locks carbon away for decades. Biochar links waste recovery, soil regeneration and durable carbon removal – delivering long-term climate benefits.

Healthy soils and ecosystems are not just environmental assets; they’re agriculture’s hidden balance sheet. By combining low-carbon inputs, circular nutrient management and soil regeneration, food systems can reduce risk, stabilize yield, and drive long-term productivity.

From Inputs to Practices

Transforming food systems is not only about evolving technologies; it is about how they are applied in the real world.

On the production side, some of the most transformative innovations work with natural processes rather than overpowering them with energy and chemicals. Precision agriculture – which became the third-largest agri-food investment category globally in 2024 – is a prime example. By using sensors, data analytics, and automation, these systems enable farmers to apply water, nutrients and crop protection only where and when they are needed. The goal is not to eliminate inputs, but to use them more intelligently when they are unavoidable.

Protein innovation represents another major lever. The UN Food & Agriculture Organization estimates that industrial animal farming accounts for about 12% of global greenhouse gas emissions – a scale reflected in the U.S. alone, where meat consumption in 2025 generated more emissions than the entire country of Italy. Precision fermentation, mycology‑based proteins, and other alternative protein pathways can meet global protein demand with far lower land, water, and livestock-related emissions. Increasingly, these technologies are embedded into existing supply chains, reducing reliance on consumer behavior change alone.

Why Scaling Requires a New Investment Logic

What ultimately determines whether these innovations move beyond pilots is not technical feasibility, but capital alignment.

After a surge in 2021, agri-food investment cooled but didn’t disappear. Instead, capital has become more selective, concentrating on technologies with structural impact: precision inputs, robotics, fermentation, energy integration, and climate resilience. This reflects a growing realism. Food systems operate on biological and infrastructure timelines, not software cycles. Crops grow seasonally. Soil regenerates over the years. Assets depreciate over decades.

Scaling agricultural transformation therefore requires long-term partnerships, blended financing, and patient capital willing to invest in outcomes that compound over time.

Why Food Sits at the Center of the Climate Transition

Food is where many planetary challenges intersect: climate, energy, water, health and resilience. It is also where many of the solutions begin.

As seasonal overconsumption reminds us, what happens on our plates is closely tied to what happens in fields, factories and energy systems. Decarbonizing food production means re-engineering those systems from the ground up – how we power them, how we manage nutrients, and how we turn waste into value.

There is no single fix. But by treating food not just as a product, but as an energy- and resource-intensive system, we can build a food economy that is healthier, more resilient and fit for a carbon-constrained world.