California-based startup Savor claims to have found a way to turn CO2 into butter, without the need of any cows. The company, which is backed by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, uses a thermochemical process to do so, allowing them to build fat molecules out of, well, thin air.
According to The Breakthrough Institute, livestock production is responsible for around 11% to 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions. By opting for plant-based alternatives on a more regular basis, it is possible to significantly reduce our carbon footprint and many companies are trying to find sustainable yet equally yummy replacements for daily dairy and meat products.
Savor is one of those companies and has been experimenting with trying to create dairy-free alternatives to ice-cream, cheese, milk and now butter. To do so, they use a thermochemical process to create fat molecules, by putting together chains of carbon dioxide pulled from the air, hydrogen and oxygen. Water, emulsifier, beta-carotene (colouring) and rosemary oil (flavouring) are then added to obtain the final product.
“We are currently pre-commercial and working through regulatory approval to be able to sell our butter. We are not expecting to be able to move forward with any kind of sales until at least 2025. So far, we had informal taste panels with tens of people. We expect to perform a more formal panel as part of our commercialisation and scale-up efforts”, said Kathleen Alexander, Savor’s chief executive.
In a report published in Nature Sustainability in December, Alexander and a team of researchers mention that synthetic butter’s footprint would amount to less than 0.8 grams of CO2 equivalent per calorie. Comparatively, real unsalted butter with 80% fat has a 2.4 grams of CO2 equivalent per calorie footprint according to CarbonCloud, a calculator of food carbon footprint. Moreover, by not needing any land in order to produce food, agricultural areas could be freed up for conservation efforts and carbon storage.
“The idea of switching to lab-made fats and oils may seem strange at first. But their potential to significantly reduce our carbon footprint is immense. By harnessing proven technologies and processes, we get one step closer to achieving our climate goals. The process doesn’t release any greenhouse gases, and it uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does. And most important, it tastes really good – like the real thing, because chemically it is”, Bill Gates wrote in a blogpost.
However, there are still a few hiccups to get out of the way. Other than getting approval and making sure the agricultural sector is on board, Alexander confirms that, after all, the taste matters most. Yet according to Gates, that shouldn’t be a problem.
