Making butter with CO2, techno-fix or techno-folly?

The startup Savor has created the first synthetic butter “made from CO2”.

Is this truly an innovative eco-alternative to real butter of animal origin, or is this yet another ‘techno green’ product not quite in line with the desired ecological transition?

Here we share a translated summary of a LinkedIn post by Pierre Gilbert.

Making butter with CO2: the latest idea of the Californian technosolutionists, supported by Bill Gates. The startup Savor is preparing to offer the American public the world’s first 100% synthetic butter.

The technical process behind this ‘butter’ consists of using CO2 extracted from the air by carbon geoengineering processes and coupling it with hydrogen extracted from water. These basic elements are transformed and combined several times until long hydrocarbon chains are obtained, in which oxygen atoms are added to produce fatty acids.

Glycerol is then incorporated into it to form triglycerides, a new form of fat. All that remains is to add water and an emulsifier, then beta-carotene to give the mixture colour as well as flavourings for flavour.

Does this sound tempting? The problem is the somewhat fallacious reasoning of the startup, which embodies a vision of the world that is totally incompatible with the ecological transition.

Savor explains that their product consumes two times less water than real butter, that it transforms 3 kg of CO2 per kg manufactured, compared to 23 kg of CO2 emitted for 1 kg of real butter. Information selection bias is obvious here, as the abovementioned process is very energy-intensive, especially CO2, air extraction, and water hydrolysis. All this should be included in the product’s carbon footprint.

But that’s not the most serious bias.

This techno-solutionist vision feeds, above all, a huge bias of “all things being equal”, the ultimate enemy of the transition.

What if butter was made with milk from reasonably-sized farms, with rotational grazing integrated into crop rotations under plant cover, and on 100% grassland? Not only would this kind of butter production offer great nutritional value and taste, but it would also contribute to carbon storage in agricultural soils.

In his post, Pierre Gilbert asks, rather sarcastically: What if real butter contained lots of vitamins A and D, little lactose, good cholesterol (HDL, unlike the LDL of hydrogenated synthetic fats), minerals and other precious molecules?

Then the philosophical questions start: What if taste is important for happiness? What if true ecology consists of replacing material goods with happiness, and the two are unrelated?

He succinctly concludes with a widely-shared view that these techo-fixes often come from machine-like thinking, totally lacking in empathy and emotion.

And in a blog post about the product, Bill Gates encapsulates that lack of emotion with his words: “it tastes really good—like the real thing, because chemically it is.” Not sure promoting something as ‘chemically the same’ is the best way to promote foods….

In any case it’s up to the consumer to decide if they prefer to have butter from CO2 or butter from COW.

Original post extracted from LinkedIn