In 2001, an entrepreneur named Tom Casten traveled down to southern Louisiana, near the small town of Franklin, with a clever idea. For decades, the area had sustained a pair of chemical plants that produced carbon black, a grimy powder used in printer ink and tire rubber. But the owner of one of the plants, Cabot Corporation, was struggling to compete against cheap tire imports from abroad, and desperately seeking ways to cut costs. That’s where Casten came in. He pointed out that the gas left over from the carbon-black process was just getting wasted--burned off and flared up into the sky. He proposed building a recycling facility that could capture the gas and use it to generate electricity. Not only would this make the plant slightly cleaner--carbon-black plants are notorious polluters--but there’d be enough juice to run Cabot’s operations, and for less than it cost to buy power from the local utility. In all, the company could save up to $1.3 million per year.