In the fight against global warming, much energy and effort is being put into reducing carbon emissions. Methane, while less common, has greater destructive power for the planet. It traps heat far more efficiently than carbon, and getting rid of it is essential to meeting global climate goals.
Methane is released from agriculture, landfills, and oil production, among other things. While some companies are trying to reduce methane emissions, others are trying to capture and remove it as it is created. A California-based startup called Windfall Bio has developed a method that sounds a bit gross, but could be a pioneer in cleaning the atmosphere of methane.
Windfall uses “memes” – methane-eating microbes. These naturally occurring microscopic organisms live in the soil and feed on methane to survive. Much like yeast that eats the sugar in bread and produces compounds that make it rise, memes eat methane and produce fertilizer. They are often found in soils and wetlands where decaying organic matter is present and methane is abundant. But memes eat methane wherever they find it. And that’s where Windfall comes in.
“We provide these meme packages, and anyone who has access to that methane can capture it themselves, turn it into fertilizer and extract valuables from it,” said Josh Silverman, CEO of Windfall Bio.
“Our customers can be farmers, they can be dairy farmers who have access to cows (think cow farts) and who need to make their own fertilizer. But we also work with customers in the oil and gas industry who have methane waste from their daily operations. We can work with landfills and waste management.”
If a farmer uses the methane, they can use the fertilizer themselves. If it’s an oil producer or a landfill, Windfall buys the fertilizer back from them and they get paid for the methane capture.
Traditional fertilizer production requires a lot of energy and causes huge carbon emissions, especially in the production of ammonia fertilizer. Using MEMS would be a truly “clean” fertilizer.
Windfall researched the use of these microbes for a decade and introduced them to its customers two years ago.
“I’ve been quite shocked, frankly, at how high the demand is,” Silverman said. “It’s far exceeded our best projections, and we now have customers on virtually every continent, and we have more inbound interest than we can possibly satisfy.”
Although there is competition in the fertilizer industry and other new methane-capturing technologies are being developed, the MEM method appears to be unique to Windfall, and investors say they are not concerned that the process will expand quickly.
“We’ve seen the data and we’re very confident in what we’ve seen so far. And we’ll continue to push this forward in a number of pilots in a number of different verticals going forward,” said Brett Morris, managing director of Cavallo Ventures, a Windfall Bio investor. “They don’t have all the solutions yet because they’re still in the early stages at this point, but I think they’re quickly doing everything they can to meet the growing customer demand, which is truly global.”
Windfall Bio plans to pilot a program with Whole Foods Market’s milk suppliers. This would reduce methane emissions and allow the food company to label its milk and other products as climate-friendly.
In addition to Cavallo Ventures, Windfall is backed by Prelude Ventures, Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Mayfield. The company has raised $37 million in funding to date.
CNBC climate producer Lisa Rizzolo contributed to this article.
