"The thick, milky white liquid looks like Elmer's glue, though it's greasy to the touch. It has a sweet, alcohol smell. It's not your father's heating oil, to be sure. But it will do the same job, says Cary J. Claiborne, and a lot more cleanly.

Claiborne is president and chief executive officer of New Generation Biofuels, a Florida-based startup that's producing fuel from vegetable and soybean oil at a small production plant it set up this year in southern Baltimore.

'It's very biodegradable,' Claiborne says as he dips his finger into a small bottle holding a sample of a recent batch. 'If it didn't have certain additives, you could drink it.'

Spurred on by government incentives, companies like New Generation Biofuels are popping up across the country to angle for a piece of a growing market for clean, renewable alternatives to coal, gas and oil."

Timothy B. Wheeler reports for the Baltimore Sun May 25, 2009. [2]