This Bill Gates startup makes butter from air that tastes ‘like the real thing'

Bill Gates-supported startup, Savor, pioneers dairy-free butter with minimal environmental impact

 

Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, speaks during the 2024 CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston, Texas.(Bloomberg)

RA California-based startup claimed that it has been successful in making butter which is dairy-free and tastes just as good. Savor, backed by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, said that its experiments with creating diary-free alternatives to ice-cream, cheese, and milk have produced a new animal-free butter alternative. This has been made by utilising a thermochemical process that allows it to build fat molecules, creating chains of carbon dioxide, hydrogen and oxygen.

Savor said that its products will have a significantly lower carbon footprint than animal-based ones as the “butter” comes in at less than 0.8g CO2 equivalent per kg. In contrast, real unsalted butter with 80% fat has a standard climate footprint of 16.9kg CO2 equivalent per kg.

Kathleen Alexander, Savor’s chief executive, said, “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.”

Backing the initiative in an online blogpost, Bill Gates wrote, “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."

He added, “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.”