A recently formed Kentucky-based startup – one that’s looking to develop a perennial grass-like crop into sustainable aviation fuel and more – has tapped a Queen City resident and native as its new top executive.
Gaby Blocher has been named CEO of Sunflower Fuels, an under-the-radar ag company spun out of downtown Cincinnati-headquartered Donovan Energy, a clean energy development and finance firm.
The move is a key step as the company starts to court investors as part of an early-stage $4 million fundraise that will greatly accelerate its plans. Blocher, who initially joined the company on a contract basis last year before being named its chief operating officee, succeeds Sunflower co-founder Brutus Clay, who will transition to the role of board director.
Sunflower Fuel’s goal is to develop a crop known as miscanthus x giganteus into a renewable energy source.
Blocher said converting the feedstock into sustainable aviation fuel is the company’s longest-term – and largest – market opportunity, although there are other uses, including animal bedding or compostable packaging.
She said Sunflower needs to be more aggressive – given the investor feedback its already received and the market need. The total addressable market for Sunflower in the sustainable aviation fuel category alone is $4.1 billion.
“It's a heavy lift, but this is the right region to do it,” she told me. “We need to get the crop in the ground and establish it – it takes time to get the yield that's necessary, and the customers with whom we are speaking to need it in a faster time and they need huge volumes. So we need to go, go, go.”
Miscanthus is a perennial, sterile, genetically engineered crop that can grow to heights of 12 feet. Blocher called it a hardy plant; it can thrive even on rocky soil, she said. “Places where nothing else can be grown.”
Sunflower Fuel’s business model, to that effect, is to plant on marginal lands, using soil with little to no agricultural or industrial value, including reclaimed surface mines, she said. The company is not looking to displace any food crops.
Miscanthus has an extremely extensive root system, and its ability to bring in carbon from the atmosphere and deposit it underground makes BECCS, or bioenergy carbon capture and storage, another large, but longer-term market opportunity. That carbon it produces can be sold as a carbon credit to interested entities.
Sunflower Fuels will target planting sites in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and West Virginia, engaging landowners, farmers and the like. The startup will serve as a development company. The company will establish special purpose vehicles, and the owners of those SPVs own the feedstock. That derisks the farmers, a big point of emphasis especially for landowners in the south.
“It’s an exciting innovation, especially with what happened with hemp in Kentucky,” Blocher said. “It was pitched to farmers as this great new crop, but then a bunch were literally left holding the bag because the market opportunity was not as big as was anticipated.”
Sunflower Fuels was officially founded in 2022. The company is headquartered in Lexington – Clay, the former CEO, is based there, and the startup expects to do a significant amount of its work in the commonwealth.
Blocher will remain Cincinnati based. She said it’s possible Sunflower will set up an additional office outpost in the region, possibly Covington, as it hires.
She currently holds court at Donovan Energy’s office in the Atlas Building on Walnut Street.
Sunflower Fuels is the third startup Donovan has spun out in recent years. Partner Tim Donovan told me the company “accidentally” launched a venture studio. As its team has fielded different problems or ideas from clients, it’s built them out, at times forming new companies.
The idea for Sunflower originally spurred out of conversations Donovan officials had with GE Aerospace, Blocher said.
Donovan's first spinout, Over-the-Rhine-based Electrada, a developer, owner and operator of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, stands as one of the region’s more promising startups. It’s been financed twice by famed investment group Blackrock.
It’s a little told part of Electrada’s founding story. Donovan Energy started the company in 2019 initially as ChargoCo. It adopted its current name in 2020. Donovan said he realizes a lot of similarities between Sunflower and Electrada.
“Once we successfully spun that out, we realized this is a pretty good opportunity for us to meet our goals, which include carbon abatement,” Donovan said. “To meet our carbon goals alone, we’re not going to get there without doing stuff like this."
Blocher, he said, has experience scaling and managing teams. Among her past experience, she served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, and Sunflower is her second stint as a startup CEO. She previously led CelerPurus, a health care startup developing a Covid-specific technology.
“Gabby is an amazing leader,” he said. “The best part will be raising this seed (round), putting a team together and watching what she’s going to build.”
