Savor, a California-based startup backed by legendary businessman Bill Gates, has come up with a method of producing butter-like fat out of just carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Starting from the idea that all fats are composed of chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms, Savor patented a thermochemical process to build fat molecules and then produce dairy-free alternatives to products like milk, butter, cheese, and ice cream that not only have the same texture as the real thing but also taste the same. This process doesn’t release any greenhouse gases, uses no farmland, and uses less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does. As a result, this synthesized fat has a much lower carbon footprint than real animal fat. So far, taste tests have shown that Savor’s alternative to butter has an almost indistinguishable flavor from the real thing, but the company still has a lot of challenges to overcome before bringing it to market. “The big challenge is to drive down the price so that products like Savor’s become affordable to the masses, either the same cost as animal fats or less,” said Gates. CO2 and hydrogen-synthesized butter is apparently just the beginning. Savor has plans to make milk, cheese, and ice cream, among others, in the not-so-distant future.
