Billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates recently backed a California-based startup called Savor that created a new type of butter made from air instead of cows.
The developers of this innovative creation claim that their unique product tastes just like real butter. They also claim it comes with a significantly lower carbon footprint which is fundamentally important for the battle against climate change.
One might wonder how anyone can make butter without milk. Savor claims its process involves using heat to combine carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen. By doing this, they say that they manage to create chains that mimic the fats of dairy products.
This unique thermochemical process makes the need for animal farming obsolete. Additionally, there is no need for fertilizers, hormones, or antibiotics normally used in the long process of butter production.
On its website, the California-based company writes:
“We start with a source of carbon, like carbon dioxide, and use a little bit of heat and hydrogen to form chains which are then blended with oxygen from the air to make the fats & oils we know, love and drool over.”
Gates and the environmental benefits of air butter
So what is the point of having cows, you might ask, since we don’t need them anymore? Well, the company is not against cow farming. However, they believe that one of the main advantages of air butter is its potential to significantly reduce the environmental impact of dairy production that is not only associated with butter but also yoghurt, milk, cheese, and other products.
As we all know, livestock farming is one of the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, the global reduction of meat and dairy consumption is crucial for environmental sustainability.
Savor’s butter reportedly has a carbon footprint of less than 0.8 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilogram, compared to 16.9 kilograms for traditional butter.
In a blog post that he posted earlier this year online, Bill Gates passionately advocated for this innovation. The co-founder of Microsoft put his emphasis on the environmental benefits of Savor’s air butter.
He noted that the fact that water usage can be significantly reduced along with the near nullification of greenhouse gas emissions is a great advancement. Publicly supporting a bold start-up, Gates wrote:
“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.”
