Climate fighters find innovative way to feed the beast

Steve Meller, the founder of climate tech company CH4 Global, says he came out of retirement to work 100-hour weeks because he believes his company can have a “gigatonne-scale” impact on the climate.

“We’ve built it, and we’ve invested enough to bring the costs down low enough that it’s economically feasible for the farmer to buy it,” Dr Meller said.

The Adelaide-born, Nevada-based entrepreneur and innovator was the keynote speaker at the Seagriculture Asia-Pacific 2025 conference in Adelaide last week.

His company has just opened a facility at Louth Bay, south of Port Lincoln on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, that is producing asparagopsis — a red seaweed native to Australian waters which is being used as a feed supplement for cattle.

Renowned environmentalist Tim Flannery said seaweed had enormous potential in the areas of carbon sequestration, water purification and methane abatement, but big questions remained about who the customer was.

“Because we still tend to socialise the damage to our environment and privatise the gains,” Professor Flannery said.

“Yet somehow the red seaweed people have found a way around this. I think they’ve been very smart in what they do, in identifying a social desire for low-emissions beef, and using that as a marketing tool.”

Beef and dairy cattle are livestock agriculture’s biggest source of methane, which has more than 80 times the warming capacity of carbon dioxide.

Adding just 0.2 per cent of the seaweed to a cow’s diet cuts their methane production by up to 90 per cent.

The 10 cultivation ponds at Louth Bay were the start of something big, Dr Meller said.

Over the next year, the facility will expand to 100 ponds capable of producing enough seaweed to serve 45,000 cattle per day, and it has the potential to expand to 500 ponds.

"It’s a matter of scale and impact,” he said.

“We’ve cracked the code on making methane-reducing feed supplements commercially viable without requiring government subsidies."

Tasmanian company Sea Forest is also producing asparagopsis as a feed supplement.

Its chief scientist Rocky de Nys noted one of its big selling points was stopping the production of carbon, rather than sequestering it.

“And that’s a really big advantage, because it’s a quantifiable and measurable outcome that’s much easier to validate and put through an accounting system,” Professor De Nys said.

CH4 Global’s SA facility consists of research and development facilities, a seedling hatchery, in-land growth ponds, and harvesting and drying technologies to convert asparagopsis into CH4 Global’s Methane Tamer products — allowing end-to-end production.

Harvesting would start at the end of March, the seaweed would be processed, commercial supply would begin and ultimately, the cows it feeds will be exported.

There is demand overseas and people are willing to pay for low-emissions beef, Dr Meller said.

“So that’s good news for beef producers in the country, because it's actually opening up new markets for Australian beef,” he said.

Louth Bay was an ideal site because it’s among the SA locations that have both species of asparagopsis.

“We had adjacency to an ocean, an existing pipeline, and proximity to Port Lincoln, which was the largest centre in that region, so we could access folks to be able to build what we’re doing in here,” Dr Meller said.

The company is looking at other SA sites as part of a hub and spoke model.

Cost and habit change were two of the biggest barriers to getting farmers on board with seaweed, “so we’ve spent a lot of time working with farmers on how we find ways to fit within their exact routines”.

“When we’re buying beef, we don’t think about what’s good for the planet 20 years from now, we do it on price, we do it on quality, we do it on taste.

“All of those experiences that we have in the food world are critically important, so you have to deliver on those things.”

CH4’s commercial partners include Mitsubishi, which wants to co-build large-scale facilities in South-East Asia; Indian company UPL, which will partner with CH4 to supply four countries; Korea's Lotte International; and American fast food chain Chipotle.

“That’s all focused on the beef side of things, and probably towards the end of the year, we’ll announce similar types of companies in dairy in other parts of the world,” Dr Meller said.

The company aims to eliminate one billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions and reach 150 million cattle by 2030.

That would happen “as quickly as I can access project financing to build more facilities”.

“I already have the demand, I now just need to build, build, build,” he said.

“I feel like I’m juggling six or seven balls, and I’m trying to keep them all in the air until the right time comes, and then they’ll all land right.”

Dr Meller is often up at 2am, working to achieve his vision, and he says the corporate veterans on his leadership team also came out of retirement “because they understood the proposition”.

“I could be leading a very comfortable life, taking vacations with my wife and dogs, but I do this because I actually think the platform we have, the team that we have, and what we’ve now validated, can actually make a difference. It’s what drives me.”

– with AAP.