Biomass offers so much promise for cleaner burning fuel because it’s renewable and plentiful. But thus far, the established chemical processes used to extract the sugars from biomass have been very expensive and required considerable energy.

In this report from 60 Minutes, we learn that an eccentric inventor named Marshall Medoff may have come up with a groundbreaking process to solve this problem:

What Masterman helped implement was Medoff’s novel idea of using these large blue machines called electron accelerators to break apart nature’s chokehold on the valuable sugars inside plant life – or biomass. Machines like these are typically used to strengthen materials such as wiring and cable. Medoff’s invention was to use the accelerator the opposite way – to break biomass apart.

The result isn’t just cleaner fuel, but they’ve also unlocked a sugar with fewer calories that won’t harm your teeth, along with plastics that are biodegradable.

Watch the report, and you may witness a glimpse into a brighter future for clean energy.