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Here's an interesting story that easily could have appeared on our "Money" blog:

At Frito-Lay's factory here, more than 500,000 pounds of potatoes arrive every day from New Mexico to be washed, sliced, fried, seasoned and portioned into bags of Lay's and Ruffles chips. The process devours enormous amounts of energy, and creates vast amounts of wastewater, starch and potato peelings.

Now, Frito-Lay is embarking on an ambitious plan to change the way this factory operates, and in the process, create a new type of snack: the environmentally benign chip.

This story is a guide to the next 25-50 years of industrial development, not only in America but around the globe. The concept is called "Net Zero," where this factory in the Southwest will be off the grid in 5 years, run almost entirely of renewable fuels and recycled water:

The project will start next year with the installation of a membrane bio-reactor, which looks like a railroad car with long strands of fettuccine hanging from the ceiling. In fact, the strands are filters that will clean the water used to process potato chips and corn products.

The waste produced by the filtering process will then be fed to a new anaerobic digester, which will produce methane gas to run the plant's boiler.

The second stage of the process will be the installation of at least 50 acres of solar concentrators behind the plant. Similar concentrators are now being installed at a plant in Modesto, Calif. The concentrators are parabolic mirrors about three feet off the ground that move with the sun and focus energy on a tube filled with water, much as a magnifying glass focuses the sun's rays.

The water is heated to about 500 degrees and is run through a maze of pipes back to the plant, where it will power a steam generator.

The last portion of the net zero plant would be a biomass generator that provides additional fuel to run the plant's boiler. Company officials have not yet determined what type of material will be used as fuel.

With the price of oil hovering near $100/barrel, these kinds of investments will become more and more commonplace. For instance,

Only a few years ago, Andy Walker, a government engineer, pleaded with companies to tackle the problems but got blank stares. "Now, my phone is ringing off the hook," said Mr. Walker, who works at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the Department of Energy in Colorado.

Let's hope his phone breaks from all the calls coming in...

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