I can’t believe it’s not butter from a cow

This toast is a little dry — can you pass the spreadable carbon dioxide?

What, does that not sound tasty?

Take it up with Savor, the startup turning greenhouse gases into butter. It’s already raised $33m in investments to date — including some cash from Bill Gates himself — to create more sustainable fats.

• The startup takes carbon dioxide and joins it with hydrogen under high heat and pressure to create fatty acids.
• The fatty acids form triglycerides, which can be used to create products like butter, lard, and tallow.
• The company says its 25k-square-foot facility in Illinois has the capacity to produce “metric tons of fat.”

Savor has already been greenlit by the FDA to sell its alternative fats in the US, with a “Generally Recognized as Safe” designation.

Out of thin air

Turning air into butter is a cool trick, but Savor is after more than shock value.

Cutting cows and crops out from the supply chain would reduce the amount of land and water needed for agriculture, as well as the volume of greenhouse gas emissions.

The startup’s founders estimate that creating dietary fats in a lab could emit just half as much CO2 as traditional production — and could one day reach near zero-emissions by using captured CO2 and renewable energy in the process.

When life gives you carbon…

Savor isn’t the only startup churning out food products from natural gases.

• Novozymes and Air Protein both use fermentation to turn CO2 into protein.
• Air Company combines carbon captured from the air and industrial sites with hydrogen to make vodka.
• Solar Foods makes Solein, a nutrient-packed protein powder, from captured CO2 and hydrogen.

While bringing the production of fats off the farm and into the lab could lighten environmental loads and be more sustainable, disrupting supply chains always comes with some risks.

Plus, the company will have to convince consumers to reach for synthetic butter, and scale production to actually compete with normal dairy products.

While your pancakes are important to us (we swear), Savor is eyeing even bigger deals: Working with consumer packaged goods companies — including those within industries like skin care — could bake Savor’s synthetic fats into products on a massive scale.