The market for crops that can be turned into fuel is really heating up. In Minnesota, turkey growers have invested $200 million in a 55-megawatt power plant that is fueled by poultry litter. Poultry litter is a combination of droppings, wood chips, seed hulls, feathers and spilled feed. Most poultry growers have used this litter to fertilize their crops, which is cheap and effective, but can cause nitrates and phosphates to build up in soil, groundwater and runoff.

The new Fibrominn (www.fibrowattusa.com) power plant in Benson, Minnesota will be the first poultry-litter-fired plant in the country. Some 500,000 tons of this litter will produce enough power for 50,000 homes annually. In addition to poultry-litter, the fuel mix contains corn stover (dried stalks), native prairie grasses and wood chips.

A company called LS9 (www.LS9.com), headquartered in San Carlos, California, is working on a biofuel that can be substituted directly and immediately for gasoline or diesel, on a gallon-for-gallon basis. This fuel can be distributed via existing oil pipelines and dispensed through existing gas stations rather than specialized pumps, and used in existing engines rather than modified "flex-fuel" engines. The feedstocks are the same that are used for ethanol (switch grass, sugarcane, corn stover), but take 65 percent less energy to produce.

Petroleum giant Conoco is entering the biofuels business. They are partnering with meat giant Tyson Foods to make biodiesel from animal fat. The companies hope to introduce the fuel in the Midwest later this year, aiming to churn out 175 million gallons annually within a few years.

Over in the United Kingdom, McDonald's has announced that it will run its delivery vehicles on biodiesel made from its own greasy grills. The chain will convert the 155-lorry fleet to a mix of 85 percent fry grease and 15 percent rapeseed oil by 2008. They say that the switch will cut its U.K. carbon emissions 75 percent. McDonald’s restaurants in Austria have already converted to biodiesel for their trucks.

In 2004, the Discovery Channel aired a series called Cool Fuel Road Trip USA. Shaun Murphy, an Australian explorer and TV host, with his Downunder crew, traveled more than 16,000 miles around the United States using two dozen vehicles powered by alternative fuels. Fifteen episodes showed how one could travel with little use of petroleum-based fuels. In Oregon and Washington, they were powered by fuel made from Soybeans. Methane from cow manure got them from Green Bay Wisconsin to Chicago. Methane from landfills (Garbage Power) fueled them from New York to Washington D.C. Hempoline (Hemp seed oil) was available in Alabama and Mississippi.

Among the vehicles he used were an electric motorcycle, a pickup truck powered by soybean oil, a jet turbine, a solar-powered canoe, and a plane powered by corn whiskey (or ethanol as farmers like to call it).

Their site, www.coolfuelroadtrip.com has information and links on cool fuel vehicles including a human powered car which takes more than one human to energize and is loosely based on Fred Flintstone’s foot-powered cartoon car.

There are also links to cool fuel energy sources including biodiesel, bio mass, geothermal, hemp oil, landfill gas, solar, sugar power, veggie oil and wind.