Farming the Future with Biochar: Restoration Bio

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COMPANY SIZE

4 founders, 8 employees

DATE FOUNDED

2019

LOCATION

Business office – Salem, VA
Facility – Waverly, VA

FUN FACT

Plants are largely made up of carbon, so by taking that carbon, refining it with heat, and putting it into farm fields, biochar actually reverses the effects of climate change.  In this case the plant materials are wood waste from mills that would otherwise be discarded, burned, or wind up emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  Carbon in biochar can remain in farm soils for hundreds of years.

Their mission:

To contribute meaningfully to a healthier planet, and economically to the ag based communities where we locate.

Reimagining Waste as an Asset:

Industries often view agricultural and forestry residues as disposable byproducts. How does Restoration Bioproducts shift this mindset by turning waste into high-value resources, and what industries stand to benefit the most?

By creating an additional use case for the residual products that come (primarily) from the lumber industry, we are able to provide a consistent and competitively priced offtake for the local businesses that are such an important part of the economy in their communities. While the products we use are a secondary product for them (for instance, saw mill shavings, chips and fines), they become an important part of the margins for those companies.

Our process maximizes product output by repurposing sustainably harvested “waste streams” into:

Beyond Sustainability—Active Restoration:

Many companies focus on reducing environmental harm, but your mission goes a step further. How does your work with biochar and bio oil not just sustain but actively restore ecosystems, from improving soil health to advancing carbon sequestration?

Our core product is biochar. When we superheat the biomass it forces the material to break down into its core parts. We don’t allow the material to catch fire, so after thermal decomposition, we are left with a black charcoal like material – biochar. Biochar produced at high temperature is mostly carbon, and is very stable (it doesn’t continue to break down). The resulting material is highly porous and carbon-rich, providing lasting environmental benefits:

When added into soils, biochar provides a perfect habitat for beneficial microbes, helps regulate and stabilize moisture in the soil, captures nutrients (including fertilizers) and allows the plants to use them over time, and helps to keep the soil from compacting.

This increases yields, lowers necessary inputs from commercial fertilizer, helps retain nutrients in the soil, and thereby keeps nutrients out of the watershed.

The condensed fluids from the process become biostimulants for seeds and plants, can be used as a feedstock for renewable plastics or other chemicals, and can be a base or drop-in alternative for traditional petroleum based fuels.

The carbon credits we measure and claim as part of the carbon negative process become attractive for corporations, particularly in high energy use industries like data centers.

These voluntary credits, purchased to offset the actual carbon footprint of a corporation, add to the capital available to companies like ours. It becomes a self-produced subsidy so that we can price our biochar and bio oil at market competitive prices.

Synergistic Partnerships for Green Energy:

In your recent project in Sussex County, you collaborated with local entities to produce biochar and green energy. How do these partnerships enhance your mission, and what benefits do they bring to the local communities and economies?

Biochar can be produced by treating many different feedstocks with high temperatures, without allowing oxygen to turn the heat into fire and incineration. This process called pyrolysis can be applied to many different waste streams – wood, municipal waste, human and animal waste, and even plastics and rubber. Because of that, you can put a pyrolysis plant near any waste stream. We choose to use wood mill and agriculture residuals, and so we choose to go into communities with existing infrastructure in place. Those communities, like Waverly in Sussex County Virginia, are largely rural, and have been generationally dependent upon agriculture based businesses. The communities have struggled to maintain that agricultural heritage and culture, and businesses built to support them have often struggled to maintain jobs and remain profitable. To the extent we can, our facilities bring additional tax revenue, solid year round jobs, product sales, and help to utilize the support services already in place in these communities. Our employees live there, our raw products come from there, and often the end products (particularly the biochar) end up in part back in the soils of those communities, strengthening the family farms and local businesses that are often struggling to hang on. We can choose to locate anywhere, but we have a passion and commitment to locating in communities like Sussex County Virginia.   

Community Benefits:

Investment in Sustainable Innovation:

With a $5.8 million investment in your new facility and plans for future growth, what opportunities do you see for investors interested in the biochar and renewable energy sectors? How does Restoration Bioproducts plan to scale its impact in the coming years?

Our philosophy on building our model is to go to areas where there is plenty of feedstock at a reasonable price, in a community that is oriented around agriculture and related industries, and to build plants at a scale that allows us to bring products in and ship products out largely within a 50 to 100 mile radius. We also are different than most biochar producers in that we recognize the value of and are monetizing the excess biogas that is produced during the pyrolysis process by condensing those gasses into bio oil and a more aqueous fraction that is largely acetic acid. This bio oil and biostimulant market for the fluids is more difficult to capture, but will be the largest stream of revenue from all the sustainable, renewable products we produce. This multi-revenue approach – biochar, bio fluids, carbon credits, and even locally produced heat or energy – creates a more diverse revenue model, and allows us to maximize return beyond just making biochar. With that model, we plan to take our facilities to multiple locations, utilizing wood and agriculture residuals, and even purpose-grown feedstocks, usually as part of a larger conservation program of land and soil revitalization.