Putting carbon where it belongs

Tom and Gina McCoy are a husband-and-wife team who have worked the last five years to promote biochar production from forest health project residuals as a vital tool for helping protect our forests and climate from the threat of extreme wildfires. 

Tom has a background in plant ecology and land management/restoration. This has allowed him to understand, not just the underlying science, but also the practical, real-world details involved in removing biomass from the forests, transporting it to a plant, processing it into high value products, and utilizing those products in agricultural systems.

Gina has a background in environmental engineering, watershed hydrology, landscape ecology, and stream processes. Like Tom, she thinks in terms of ecosystems and natural processes. 

Together, they have more than 60 years of combined experience in managing and restoring western ecosystems.  They have also developed an extensive network of colleagues and advisors ranging from researchers and policy makers to loggers and farmers.

C6 Innovations is dedicated to helping protect our forests and climate by catalyzing a new industry based on utilizing excess forest materials that are currently unmerchantable and treated as waste. Our forests are the most important resource for removing carbon from the atmosphere, sequestering about twice as much carbon as do other ecosystems. Restoring fire resilience to overstocked forests by removing and pyrolyzing excess biomass provides the opportunity to make beneficial use of the carbon contained in the biomass (about 50% of the dry weight). The potential products of pyrolysis include not only carbon-storing biochar, but also carbon-rich liquids and gasses that can be utilized for a variety of fossil fuel-replacing products. Our goal is to help establish a new, green industry that pays the costs of restoring the health of our overstocked dry forests.

In addition to facilitating a feasibility analysis for a promising location for a biochar production facility, we are working to eliminate key obstacles to the widespread adoption of biochar. These include increasing the availability of forest biomass (an administrative issue, not a physical one), and increasing the awareness of the benefits of biochar as a soil amendment among agricultural producers.