The University of Utah’s Wilkes Climate Center has awarded its first $1.5 million climate prize to a Seattle biotech firm, Lumen Bioscience, that has developed and patented enzymes that could potentially halve the climate-damaging methane that cows belch all day.
“Methane is responsible for about 30 percent of the climate change we’ve seen to date,” said William Anderegg, a U. associate professor of biology and director of the Wilkes Center.
While fossil fuels and carbon dioxide deserve the bulk of the blame for climate change, agriculture — particularly livestock — is the biggest generator of human-caused methane.
