A California-based biotechnology startup has officially launched the world’s first commercially available butter made entirely from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, eliminating the need for traditional agriculture or animal farming. Savor, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, announced the commercial release of its animal- and plant-free butter after three years of development.
The revolutionary product uses a proprietary thermochemical process that transforms carbon dioxide captured from the air, hydrogen from water, and methane into fat molecules chemically identical to those found in dairy butter. According to the company, the process creates fatty acids by heating these gases under controlled temperature and pressure conditions, then combining them with glycerol to form triglycerides.
I’d be very impressed if this somehow created more methane than cow farts.
Mostly comes out the other end. Burps mainly, the farts mostly contain poo
I would like to subscribe to Cow Facts
If the energy used to run the plant comes from burning natural gas, it very probably could.
I once saw a company that advertised “Bio-Diesel”. Destilled out of Maize alcohol on heat from burning lignite coal… The entire process is an ecological disaster and a sham worse than just using straight up mineral oil products.
EDIT: I am not saying that this would have to be the case here, but why it is so important to do an LCA. Comparing environmental effects of different possibilities is not trivial and sometimes what seems to be the obviously better choice turns out being worse.
California does have many natural gas power plants. And it’s plausible that this start-up is relying on the public grid to develope their butter. But it seems unlikely that people trying to create animal and plant free butter are doing it without considering the environment.
But that’s not a problem with the process. That could be applied to anything.
Power source isn’t part of the equation unless the process can only be done in a location with a specific type of power source. Otherwise, you just compare the power amounts used between the two options, and multiply by something like the national average CO2 burden from all power.
The process requires high temperatures and pressures.
In refineries this is achieved by burning some of the gas for heating. When this plant is also heated with gas it definitely is part of the equation
Harness cow farts