Dairy is one of life's great pleasures--science even says so. But the cows that make butter also produce a tremendous amount of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Now, a Bill Gates-backed startup is developing "butter" without the environmental footprint, according to Inc.com.
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 co-founder 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 gases and account for about 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas 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.
According to Pitchbook, Savor has raised more than $33 million to-date from BEV and other VC firms including Climate Capital and CPT Capital. The company's inaugural product is a butter replacement that could hit the market in the coming year or two, according to Gates, but Savor also has its sights set on milk, ice cream, cheese, meat, and even tropical oils.
Source: azertag.az
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