The methane emitted from livestock is becoming a big problem to solve.
With agriculture companies needing to reduce carbon emissions and their environmental footprint, there’s an emergence of startups working on methane reduction for animals.
The big idea:
- Livestock and cattle are one of the largest emitters of methane gas into the environment, accounting for nearly a third of global methane emissions
- One of the reasons for this methane is a by product of the natural digestion process for cattle, sheep and goats and happens when they burp
- This puts farmers and agriculture companies in a difficult spot as they are needing to reduce emissions in the face of many new rules around carbon reduction and getting closer to net zero emissions
- Multiple startups are working on innovating what livestock actually get fed in order to reduce enteric fermentation, which leads to less methane emitting burps
Who is making moves:
- CH4 Global recently raised $29M in a Series B round for their flagship product ‘Methane Tamer’ that uses a red seaweed that is capable of reducing animal based methane emission by 90%
- Mootral, a British-Swiss startup who has developed their own livestock feed to reduce emissions, also announced that they have developed a VERRA approved methodology for creating carbon credits based for farmers based on reducing their methane emissions
- Australian based Rumin8 attracted notable investment from Bill Gates venture fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures in their $12M Series A to advance their proprietary supplements for reducing livestock methane emissions
- Y Combinator recently backed new startup Alga Biosciences in a $4M seed round to use algae develop leading edge feed and supplements for cows to reduce methane
- Volta Greentech, a Swedish based startup, ran a pilot project earlier this year in collaboration with a farm in Sweden that validated their red seaweed based feed supplement reduced methane emissions by 80%
The intrigue:
- While feed and supplements are one approach to solving animal based methane emissions, it isn’t the only one
- Zelp, a startup spun out of London’s Royal College of Art, has created a wearable device that can be worn on cows that oxidizes their methane emissions and releases it back into the air as water vapour
