Local businessman Gary Sink never thought of himself as an environmentalist, but lately he has found a passion for developing cleaner-burning biodiesel in a sustainable way.

It all started when Dean Price, Sink’s soon-to-be partner, ran out of fuel after Hurricane Katrina hit and couldn’t refill his tank because the supply lines were cut off. To ensure that this problem never happened again, he decided to investigate making his own fuel.

Price asked Sink, a Davidson County resident retired from 34 years in sales, to come on board to help promote the new company. Price already owned two Red Birch truck stops in Virginia — one in Ridgeway and one in Bassett. They began to add on to the Bassett facility with the aim of producing biodiesel.

“What we ended up creating is this nation’s first and only farm-to-fuel closed loop system,” Sink said. “We go all the way from the farm to the fuel pump.”

Sink said that normally, there are five separate links in the chain of production. A grower sells seed to a broker, who then sells it to a big conglomerate to be crushed. The resulting oil will then be sold to a refiner, who converts it into fuel and sells it to a “jobber,” who blends it with diesel and takes it to a fuel station.

“We contract with farmers to grow canola seed,” Sink said. “Then, we bring them to the plant and we crush it there, and we sell the meal back to farms for animal feed. We take the oil and refine it into biodiesel, blend it with diesel and sell it next door at our truck stop.”

Because canola grows in the winter, this operation gives farmers a cash crop to produce instead of simply planting ground cover, Sink said. The feed meal that comes out of the crushing process is high in protein and nutritious for farm animals.

Red Birch Energy is now a year old, and it sells a blend of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent standard diesel at the Bassett truck stop. It collects rainwater for use in processing, and Sink hopes to equip it to produce its own energy.

One of the partners’ next goals is to redo its crushing operation to meet FDA standards for producing food-grade canola oil. Once that is accomplished, they can sell it to restaurants, who will cook with it and send back the waste oil to be refined. This will lower expenses and make the business truly sustainable, Sink said.

Last week, Sink and Price attended an energy briefing at the White House with 75 leaders from across the Midwest and the Atlantic. There, they spoke to government officials and other alternative energy industry representatives about their vision.

“We have to grow our energy; we can no longer continue to drill for it,” Sink said. “We’ve extracted all of the easy oil. Since 1972, we’ve become extremely dependent on importing oil, which is a pretty dangerous situation for us to be in.”

The two partners have been assigned a contact with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which plans to help with research and development. Moving forward, Sink and Price hope to convert their idea into a franchise with multiple locations across the Southeast, run in large part by local farmers and businesses.

“We advocate community-owned, farmer-supplied, renewable energy facilities,” Sink said. “What we really would like to do is replicate this and have the area community businesses own the facilities.”

In a decade when Davidson County has seen great losses in its manufacturing industries, Sink said he wants to give local people hope that “green” jobs will help get the county back on its feet. If brought here, his model would keep most of the profits in this area.

“About 90 percent of every dollar spent on our fuel stays in the local community,” Sink said. “About 10 percent goes to other states, but not one penny leaves this country.”

Davidson County’s agricultural industry also would stand to benefit from operations like Red Birch Energy, he said. Two of the most popular alternative fuels, biodiesel and ethanol, are produced from crops grown by farmers.

“Farmers are going to be the oil barons of the future,” Sink said. “I think every farmer has an oil well. All they’ve got to do is plant it.”

For more information, visit redbirchenergy.com or call 276-632-2530.

Staff Writer Karissa Minn can be reached at 888-3576 or newsdesk@tvilletimes.com.