A California-based startup – backed by Microsoft co-founder billionaire and climate tech investor Bill Gates – has developed a dairy-free butter alternative, The Guardian reported.

Following trials to create dairy-free alternatives to ice-cream, cheese and milk using a thermochemical process to build fat molecules, creating chains of carbon dioxide, hydrogen and oxygen, Savor had developed a new animal-free butter alternative, the 16 July report said.

According to the company, its products will have a significantly lower carbon footprint than animal-based ones, with its alternative butter potentially having less than 0.8g CO₂ equivalent per calorie compared to “real” 80% fat unsalted butter’s standard climate footprint of approximately 2.4g CO₂ equivalent per calorie.

“We are currently pre-commercial and working through regulatory approval to be able to sell our butter. We are not expecting to be able to move forward with any kind of sales until at least 2025,” Savor’s chief executive Kathleen Alexander was quoted as saying.

Although meat and dairy alternatives have become increasingly popular, replicating the flavour of butter had not always been achieved, The Guardian wrote.

According to Savor, the flavour of its butter alternative is more exact.

“We had informal taste panels … and we expect to perform a more formal panel as part of our commercialisation and scale-up efforts,” Alexander said.

The question now was if synthetic fats would prove popular with consumers, the report said.

Speaking about the dairy-free initiative in an online blogpost, Gates wrote: “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. By harnessing proven technologies and processes, we get one step closer to achieving our climate goals.

According to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the livestock industry – comprising all dairy and meat agricultural farming – accounts for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.