I was reading in an old issue of Business Week that an electricity producer, AES, converted two 1950s era coal plants in Hungary to generate power from agricultural waste, such as sawdust and sunflower seed shells. The interesting part of this conversion was that steam turbines from the communist era were still being used to turn the generators. The article did not say how much power these plants produced, but it seemed from the article that the plants were fairly profitable. As I see all of the old coal plants in Indiana and Kentucky, it makes me wonder whether they could have a future life as energy producers via agriculural waste. Lord knows there is plenty of agricultural waste in this part of the country. Not too long ago I thought the only option for these archaic coal plants was to retrofit them to make them burn coal in a less polluting manner or retire them altogether. However, now I have new hope that some of these plants could actually become alternative energy producing sources. Let's hope that this becomes a feasible option down the road in the not too distant future, just as it has become a reality in Hungary.