A Bill Gates-backed startup is developing “butter” without the environmental footprint.
San Jose, California-based startup Savor uses a thermochemical process to create
a fatty rich spread similar to butter, using just carbon dioxide, heat, hydrogen, and oxygen. The company pulls CO2 from air
and hydrogen from water, then heats and oxidizes them to form fat. The creation is
earning a lot of attention, especially from Gates, a self-identified animal fat aficionado.
In a blog post that reads like a love letter to “the greasy, oily sizzle” that makes cheeseburgers so tasty, the billionaire cofounder of Microsoft described why his
VC firm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), invested in Savor.
“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,” he wrote.
According to UC Davis, cattle are the biggest agricultural source of greenhouse emissions .
But even cutting out the cow isn’t a silver bullet. There are already plenty of dairy
alternatives on the market, like margarine, but they are typically made from a blend of plant oils. Crops require land and resources to grow-and some are more environmentally draining than others.
One notorious offender is palm oil, which can be found in everything from food and beauty products to biofuel and cleaning products. Although the palm oil industry has made improvements, it was once synonymous with deforestation and the loss of biodiversity, Vox reported.
Savor says its butter is better, given it doesn’t require the plants, animals or chemicals used to make butter, margarine and other fat products.
Peoplesmind
