Ten Eco-Friendly Companies

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1 Farming New Fuels

Seattle Biodiesel: It makes an alternative fuel derived from vegetable oil that burns clean

John Plaza experienced his alternative-energy epiphany 37,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean. The commercial pilot, flying freight from Anchorage, Alaska, to Tokyo several years ago, had time for some back-of-the-envelope calculations about his 747's fuel consumption. He figured his jet was burning enough fuel to power an average car for 42 years. The revelation disturbed him. "I came to the conclusion that I needed to do something different with my life," he says.

So two years ago Plaza started Seattle Biodiesel, which makes an alternative automobile fuel that many experts think could finally ease the nation's addiction to oil. Derived from vegetable oil, biodiesel can be blended with regular diesel or poured by itself into any conventional diesel car or truck. It produces relatively clean, almost sweet-smelling emissions. Biodiesel's obstacles have been its high price and the absence of a nationwide infrastructure to crush and refine oil-rich crops into usable fuel. Biofanatics usually have to drive to the back of a restaurant and beg for free waste oil to fill up their green machines. But Plaza and his partner, multimillionaire dot-com veteran Martin Tobias, plan to turn biodiesel into a viable national alternative. "Our mission is to make a gas that is so cheap and plentiful that consumers don't even have to know it's not made from fossil fuels," says Tobias, who invested his own money and has recruited investors such as Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen.

They're now trying to create a local agricultural economy around biodiesel, using their new refinery to convince Washington farmers there's demand for feedstock such as canola and mustard seed. Plaza and Tobias expect to begin crushing and refining local crops next year, which means they can cut down on the expense of importing soybean oil from the Midwest.