EU Climate Agency: Alternative Proteins Are Inevitable for Future Food Security

What will the food system look like in 2050? According to the EU, meat will give way to plants and novel proteins, no matter how things end up.

The EU’s production and consumption patterns require “fundamental changes” to reach its sustainable living vision for 2050, its environmental arm has said.

The European Environment Agency’s (EEA) new foresight report looks at how the region can futureproof its food, mobility and energy systems, in line with its agenda of “living well, within environmental limits” by 2050.

Its predictions of what society would look like in 2050 are based on four imagined futures – or “imaginaries” – developed by the EEA and its Eionet network, each a distinct pathway shaped by societal drivers, governance models and technological roles.

In ‘Technocracy for the common good’, national governments drive the sustainability shift as liberalised markets get blamed for decades of socio-environmental problems, supported by the unprecedented monitoring capabilities of the IT sector.

The ‘Unity in adversity’ pathway is driven by recurrent climate disasters, geopolitical tensions and financial shocks, empowering the EU to use stringent, top-down regulatory measures to set rigorous economic boundaries. Here, industry plays a subservient role.

In the third scenario, ‘The great decoupling’, innovative businesses are the central actors, with their bioeconomy and tech breakthroughs enabling the decoupling of economic growth from environmental harms.

And finally, the ‘Ectopia’ imaginary combines climate change, growth scepticism, government distrust, and the desire to live in harmony to empower civil society stakeholders to lead a shift in collective action, as consumption and resource use scale back notably.

Each of these scenarios offers different ways for Europeans to meet the 2050 goal – though some solutions are common across all four futures. Alternative proteins – whether plant-based, cell-cultivated, or fermentation-derived – are one of them.

Here’s how the protein industry would fare 25 years from today, according to the EEA.

Technocracy for the common good

Under this scenario, national governments use dynamic food pricing to reflect the health and environmental costs of products – think carbon taxes on meat, as in Denmark starting 2030 – with the aim of nudging consumers towards healthier dietary choices. In fact, nutrition plays a bigger role than taste and food culture.

People are eating cultivated meat, as well as biofermented proteins, which the EEA describes as extracted from “bio-based residual resources”. In contrast, animal-based nutrition is “marginal”.

Policymakers prioritise health and the environment over individual preferences. Digitally implemented dynamic food pricing provides an effective monetary incentive for such diets and guarantees that people can always afford to purchase healthy food no matter their economic situation.

Meanwhile, Europeans increasingly eat food produced in bulk at biorefineries, with exotic food consumption now a celebrated ritual for those who can afford it.

Unity in adversity

Here, all food production is controlled by the EU and local authorities, which are pushing for the integration of agroforestry, agricultural drones, and low-methane livestock diets.

The production of meat alternatives has reached industrial scale to support food security, and these technologies are highly regulated by EU institutions to monitor food safety, environmental impacts, resource allocation, and responsible and ethical research and production.

A large amount of food is produced within Europe, resulting in more seasonal diets and a reliance on fermented products. Alternative proteins, including algae-derived proteins and plant-based dairy, are subsidised and play a key role in nutrition security.

Meanwhile, at the societal level, dietary choices are influenced by a broader culture shift and policy instruments like taxes, subsidies and carbon pricing, all in favour of organic, low-carbon and local products. This ‘imaginary’ also involves “very little food waste”, amid incentives to reduce waste in both processing and retail.

The great decoupling

With biotech giants dominating the agriculture sector, this imaginary sees a highly efficient, circular bioeconomy. Agriculture is used for carbon sequestration, and tech-enabled productivity gains and organic farming come to the fore.

However, the large multinationals control much of the food system and fiercely compete for scarce resources like water and minerals, with less of a focus on healthy food.

That said, policies promote pricing incentives to “shift dietary choices away from emissions-intense animal products” while wild-caught meat is severely limited in availability. Meat alternatives are developed at an industrial level from protein-packed pulses and algae, which are cheap.

A growing number of Europeans are eating cell-cultured superfoods made from a customised composition. “Due to a strong market orientation, standards, monitoring and control systems are seldomly regulated by the state and are only harmonised across Europe in particularly critical areas,” the EEA predicts.

Ecotopia

In a consumer-influenced food landscape, production has shifted to closed-loop systems on small-scale, cooperative farms and urban areas that prioritise integration with natural systems, dominated by organic farming, agroecology, and virtually no pesticide and fertiliser use.

Many European citizens have become “prosumers”, producing some of their own food, while food value chains are shorter, localised, seasonal, less processed, and plant-based. These attributes can be seen in products beyond just supermarkets.

With consumers wanting to connect with their food and how it’s produced, nutrition has become a cornerstone of life. The dietary shift away from animal products is motivated by ethical and ecological concerns, too, with EU citizens prioritising plant-based, legume-rich diets to reduce diet-related health problems and cut emissions.

While the desire for “highly processed food” is scarce, non-sustainable foods are extremely expensive due to taxes, making sustainable products the more affordable alternative.

Is the EU making progress on these goals?

Agriculture is responsible for 11% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, and 81-86% of these come from livestock. That’s despite animal-based foods only providing 35% of calories and 65% of proteins in the region.

The meat and dairy sector is heavily subsidised, receiving four times as much public money as plant-based farming and around 82% of the subsidies under the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP).

It explains why there have been growing calls – from doctors, consumer groups, food giants, and even farmers – for the EU to transform its protein supply towards planet-friendly sources.

“Across all imaginaries, a dietary shift from animal-based to plant-based foods is seen as an important strategy to reduce overall GHG emissions and resource use across the food system,” the EEA notes in its report, adding that the transition towards alternative proteins is seen as an opportunity to “decarbonise the food system, innovate across the food supply chain, and contribute to food security”.

The EU has been heavily criticised for its failure to deliver on its Farm to Fork strategy, with its new agrifood vision – unveiled in February – labelled as “the death” of that environmental vision.

In a potentially positive sign, agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen has answered calls to create a protein diversification strategy, promising a “holistic approach” that would encompass both protein production and consumption and diversify the imports of plant-based protein to boost food security.

Anna Strolenberg, a member of the EU Parliament and a key voice behind this push, has called for more concrete steps and a timeline. She told Green Queen that “there is real momentum to take further steps”, with the upcoming CAP reform providing an opportunity to support farmers to adopt new protein crops.

“This can help de-risk investments in new production methods and crops,” she said. “If the strategy also includes measures to develop value chains and expand consumer choices, we believe it has the potential to become a real success.”