Waste to fuel facilities are nothing new--in the past few years, we've seen chicken poop-powered fuel cell plants, a scheme to use astronaut poop for fuel in space, and a town that's converting wastewater sludge into thermal energy. But now, occasional clean energy cheerleader Bill Gates is taking an interest in the technology--and that means it may start getting more attention.The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently awarded Columbia University professor Kartik Chandran a $1.5 million grant to develop a "Next-Generation Urban Sanitation Facility" in Accra, Ghana along with Waste Enterprisers (a private American-led, Ghanaian company) and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. The facility, which has not yet been built, will turn organic compounds from fecal sludge into biodiesel and methane (two energy sources).Read more from Big Gav over at PeakEnergy