A California-based company called Savor has found a way to make butter—from thin air! The company takes molecules of carbon dioxide (CO2), plus hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O), and rearranges the atoms to build fatty acids. These are the building blocks that make up fats, like those found in butter. “The chemistry is actually fairly simple,” says Emma Regan, a physicist who works at Savor.
This synthetic, or lab-made, butter looks and tastes like the real deal. This process also generates about half as many heat-trapping greenhouse gases as typical butter production. Savor can use these fatty acids to create other foods too, like tallow—fat from animals—and ice cream!