America’s “Yankee ingenuity” has brought us everything from the airplane to the light bulb, but can it now help us find a cheap, plentiful form of homegrown domestic energy? Perhaps so, as numerous mom and pop shops have sprung up around the country seeking to tackle just this problem. In Seattle, one small start up called Prometheus Energy just landed a contract to produce liquid natural gas at a city landfill, while in Folsom, California another called Jadoo Power has just pioneered a portable hydrogen fuel cell technology for remote satellite phones. But perhaps most intriguing is a company called LiveFuels, a small shop that recently partnered with the U.S. government to turn algae into biofuel. Thomas Edison would be proud!