April 20th, 2026
In the Spotlight: Gabrielle Blocher of Sunflower Fuels
Happy Monday, friends. Logan here. Some unfortunate news: I ruptured by Patellar Tendon this weekend while proving I could still dunk a basketball. For the record, I could still dunk. I just kept doing it and then paid the price.
This week I sat down with Gabrielle Blocher, CEO of Sunflower Fuels - a company I described as working in the “real world” as opposed to the digital one.
Kentucky has millions of acres of underutilized land, an energy economy in transition, and a generation of farmers trying to figure out what's next. Sunflower Fuels is trying to solve all three with a single crop - miscanthus, a perennial biomass crop that yields for 30-plus years from one planting and thrives on reclaimed surface mine land, or really any land that normal crops may struggle on.
The first planting is 15 acres across two reclaimed mine sites in Perry County, funded with a $150K grant from the Kentucky Ag Development Fund, a $100K grant from Bluegrass Ag Tech Development Corp, and private investment including Keyhorse on the cap table. The near-term goal is purchasing roughly 300 acres in Eastern Kentucky this winter for the first larger-scale planting.
What makes the company interesting is how Gaby is sequencing the markets. Today they're selling Revive Animal Bedding - a 100% miscanthus horse bedding - with Perry County itself as the biggest customer. Next up is renewable food packaging (miscanthus is already being used for that across the border in Tennessee). Mid-term is bioenergy with carbon capture (BECCS). And the long-term vision is sustainable aviation fuel. Each market funds the path to the next one.
The most counterintuitive thing I learned: in BECCS, power revenue is basically a rounding error. The real money lives in the voluntary carbon credit market - companies like Microsoft and Amazon offsetting their own footprints. That's what makes the long-term plan actually pencil out.
Gaby's personal arc is worth the listen on its own. Naval Academy in the late 90s when women were less than 10% of most classes. Five years in the Marine Corps. Business school. A career split roughly 50/50 between consulting and startups. Deep Kentucky roots - her parents met at UK and her late mother was from Eastern Kentucky - and she's running the company out of Spark House in Covington, inside the ecosystem Dave Knox and the Blue North team have been building.
Co-founder Brutus Clay (relative of Henry Clay) has a line that sums up the whole company: Kentucky was ground zero for pulling carbon out of the ground through coal. It can be ground zero for putting it back.
In a moment where AI is making software startups more uncertain, Sunflower Fuels is a useful counterweight. Atoms, not bits. Slower, harder, and potentially much more durable.
What We Discussed
A "fire and forget" 30-year crop - Why miscanthus is the through-line for the entire Sunflower Fuels thesis, and what it's doing on reclaimed surface mine land in Perry County.
Bedding today, jet fuel tomorrow - The market-sequencing strategy: horse bedding funds the first planting, bigger plantings unlock the next market, and each step compounds toward SAF.
Why carbon credits, not power, are the business - Inside the BECCS economics Gabby is building toward, and why she sees voluntary carbon credit revenue, not power generation, as the real unlock.
The 2025 pivot - A hard year, a failed push for long-term feedstock agreements, and the honest decision to establish the market one bag of bedding at a time.
The Northern Kentucky ecosystem - Blue North, Spark House, Dave Knox, Donovan Energy, SOAR, Flywheel - and what it means for a founder to feel seen
Upcoming Events:
Tuesday, April 21st, 2026 - Awesome Fellowship Spring 2026 Demo Day & Lunch
Join us at Awesome Inc for lunch and an exclusive look at the newest, high-caliber additions to Awesome Inc’s startup accelerator, the Fellowship.
Your chance to bump into local startup founders, corporate innovators, and community leaders at Lexington’s tech and innovation hub is coming up on April 21st from 11:30 - 1:00pm.
You’ll be in the room with:
- 12 current Fellowship companies and alumni founders
- 5 Across judges and past presenters
- Corporate leaders from our region
- Esteemed partners, sponsors, and investors
As a subscriber of Middle Tech, you can register for free at this link.
We hope you enjoy this episode! If you have any thoughts after listening, feel free to shoot me a message at [email protected]
Have a great week, friends!
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