A Bill Gates–backed startup says it can make butter with no cows, crops, or cooking oils, by building fat molecules from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.
What Happened: At Savor's suburban Chicago facility, co-founder and CEO Kathleen Alexander told CBS Chicago, "So you're using this gas right now to cook your food and we're proposing that we would like to first make your food with -- with that gas."
She added that, compared with conventional agriculture, "the land footprint is, like, a thousand times lower," and said, "Savor Butter… we expect that to be on the shelves kind of more like around 2027." "This is really about how we feed our species and heal our planet at the same time," Alexander said.
The process aims to recreate what makes dairy butter buttery without animal agriculture. Savor says fats are long chains of carbon and hydrogen, so its system takes carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, heats and oxidizes them, and produces real fat molecules. The approach, the company says, avoids farmland and direct greenhouse-gas emissions while tasting like the familiar product.
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Why It Matters: Billionaire Bill Gates endorsed the concept in a February 2024 blog post. "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," Gates wrote.
Describing how Savor's product tasted, he wrote, "I've tasted Savor's products, and I couldn't believe I wasn't eating real butter. (The burger came close, too.)" He also noted the goal is to cut 7% of global emissions tied to producing fats and oils.
For now, Savor is working with restaurants, bakeries and food suppliers and plans to make chocolates with its butter for the 2025 holiday season, with broader retail to follow. The company touts palm-oil-free recipes and a smaller footprint than traditional butter making.
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