THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

It powers their machinery. They being various companies and utilities in Europe that are producing their own electricity and gas from food waste and sewage.

Sewage-derived power supplies 22 percent of Severn Trent’s energy, almost double that of 2005. At United Utilities, it’s 14 percent. British utilities are shifting fecal matter to vats of bacteria that consume the waste, releasing biogas that’s burned to drive water treatment. The result is lower energy bills and surplus power sent to the grid that heat more U.K. tea kettles.

Water businesses in Britain aren’t the only ones finding value in waste. Companies in Europe and China are turning more to biogas to counter fossil-fuel costs and energy price volatility. Microsoft Corp., the largest software maker, uses effluents to help power a data center in Wyoming. Skiers in northern Arizona speed down slopes on artificial snow made entirely from treated wastewater.

“We live in a resource-constrained world, we’re going to have to squeeze more and more out of our waste,” said Christopher Gasson, the publisher of Global Water Intelligence in Oxford, England. Sewage sludge “smells like money to an increasing number of entrepreneurs.”

Some investors in Europe see an opportunity in such a market. Last year, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG heiress Susanne Klatten, Germany’s wealthiest woman, bought 20 percent of Paques BV, a Dutch biogas technology business.

There are about 2,250 facilities in Europe now using sewage sludge to produce biogas that can generate power, according to the European Biogas Association.

Germany and Switzerland have the highest concentration with 980 and 463. The U.K. and Sweden have at least 100 each.

An elegant solution to recycling. Take a shit in the morning and heat your home with it that night.