Meet the 'methane man' with a mission: Using microbes to eat up the greenhouse gas

Josh Silverman is obsessed with methane.

The serial entrepreneurial and biochemist has been focused connected methane for 15 years. Most recently, he's zeroed successful connected the thought of utilizing methane-eating microbes to combat clime change.

That obsession, and a batch of persistence getting investors to wage attention, led Silverman to motorboat his latest company, Windfall Bio. The startup was founded successful 2022 and sells methane-eating microbes, oregon methanotrophs, to its aviator customers, farmers.

Farmers person a batch of methane connected manus from cattle burps and cattle manure. These enzymes devour the methane, which contributes to clime change, and captures nitrogen from the aerial to marque fertilizer, a captious and expensive commodity that the husbandman tin past crook astir and usage close determination connected the farm.

On Wednesday, Windfall Bio is revealing its ngo to the nationalist for the archetypal clip and announcing a $9 cardinal circular of backing from task steadfast Mayfield, with information from different investors, including Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

It's taken a agelong clip for Silverman, who's co-founder and CEO of Windfall Bio, to get this far. For years, helium struggled to get investors to wage attraction to the thought due to the fact that c dioxide has taken halfway signifier successful the clime alteration conversation.

Carbon dioxide is the azygous largest contributor to planetary warming, but methane is successful second place, liable for astir 30% of the planetary summation successful temperature since the Industrial Revolution, according to the International Energy Agency. Methane gets scrubbed retired of the ambiance faster than c dioxide, but during its archetypal 2 decades successful the air, it's much than 80 times arsenic potent arsenic CO2 astatine trapping heat, according to NASA.

"If you lone look astatine the agelong term, and you don't walk thing connected abbreviated term, you extremity up tripping implicit your feet," Silverman told CNBC.

"Just successful the past mates of years, I deliberation that cognition is truly changing."

Silverman got his Ph.D. successful biochemistry from Stanford successful 2002, and his spent the archetypal years of his vocation processing therapeutic drugs. But helium grew bushed of the dilatory gait of getting those drugs to the market, truthful turned his expertise toward concern processes instead.

In 2007, helium co-founded a institution called Siluria, which specialized successful turning earthy gas, which is mostly methane, into higher-value products.

In the aboriginal portion of the 2010s, determination was a surge successful hydraulic fracking, which made the terms of methane autumn significantly, reinforcing the imaginable concern lawsuit of utilizing it to marque products, not conscionable fuel.

In 2010, Silverman co-founded Calysta, which specializes successful creating macromolecule with fermentation. There, helium had his archetypal commercialized acquisition with methane-eating bacteria.

"They were known successful the lit and described, truthful you tin find papers connected them. But they were not sexy, they were not good known — it was a fewer Earth subject professors virtually successful the basement of their geology departments who had looked astatine these," Silverman told CNBC.

While methane-eating microbes are people occurring, the technological lit astatine the clip said they were precise dilatory to turn and not casual to enactment with. But with further investigation, Silverman started to recognize that those ideas were built connected aged research, and without modern technology.

"It turns out, astir of the dogma was wholly wrong," Silverman said.

With due techniques to provender them and the close benignant of environments, methane-eating microbes tin beryllium genetically modified and grown quickly, conscionable similar astir different kinds of bacteria.

"They're conscionable capable to devour a antithetic nutrient than astir different bacteria. And erstwhile you woody with that, past the remainder is really beauteous easy," helium told CNBC.

For his adjacent move, Silverman wanted to usage each of his combined acquisition — his cognition that methane could beryllium a gathering artifact for different utile products, and that methane-eating microbes tin standard — to code clime change, which helium calls "the large elephant successful the room."

"Who cares astir making a small spot of interaction present and there? You person got to plaything for the fences, right? This is simply a 'go large oregon spell home' story," Silverman said.

Silverman knew helium wanted to spot if methane-eating bacteria could assistance combat clime change, but archetypal needed to fig retired a concern case. "That was truly the halfway problem," Silverman told CNBC.

Because these microorganisms devour methane and enactment the resulting nutrients into the soil, cattle farms were a logical introduction point. Using the bacteria could prevention them wealth they'd usually person to walk connected fertilizer.

The benefits tin each beryllium measured clearly, which helped Silverman marque the concern case.

"We measurement methane into the compost pile, we measurement methane coming retired of the compost pile, we measurement c and nitrogen near implicit successful the compost pile," Silverman told CNBC. "There's nary modeling oregon uncertainty associated with it. It's 100% quantifiable with the highest certainty of immoderate benignant of clime interaction that we bash person today."

That concern exemplary got Mayfield investors connected board.

"By converting methane into an effectual integrated fertilizer done methane-eating microbes, Windfall tin dramatically little costs and crook the challenges faced by these industries into advantages," said Arvind Gupta, a spouse astatine Mayfield. "Windfall's innovative methane seizure and conversion solution has garnered the attraction and concern of dairy and agronomy leaders, specified arsenic Grupo Lala, Wilbur Ellis, and TetraLaval, arsenic good arsenic an experienced syndicate task superior firms," Gupta said.

Gupta besides drew assurance from Silverman's erstwhile entrepreneurial experience. Since 2002, Silverman has co-founded 4 companies and helped turn 2 others.

"We are arrogant to spouse with Josh, the world's foremost adept successful commercializing methane-eating microbes and a palmy entrepreneur," Gupta told CNBC.

While farmers are a archetypal acceptable of customers, Silverman's goals are to fto these microbes escaped connected galore different sources of methane emissions successful years to come.

First, they volition determination to different types of livestock farms, similar cows, pigs and chickens, Silverman told CNBC. From there, Windfall Bio volition determination to different sources of dilute methane emissions, similar landfills and wastewater attraction facilities.

"Our extremity is not to beryllium conscionable for cows, it is to beryllium for everything," Silverman said.