Thai village firing up stoves with scooped poop

Pa Deng, Thailand

NESTLED in a deep pocket of forest that lies off Thailand's electrical grid, villagers in Pa Deng have become early adopters and evangelists for an unusual alternative energy source: poop.

After successfully lighting up their homes with solar panels and stoves fuelled by cow dung, the villagers are now clean energy crusaders in a gas-guzzling country that overwhelmingly relies on fossil fuels.

It was a friend from Myanmar who first told 44-year-old Wisut Janprapai that faeces could be used to power a cooking stove.

"At first we didn't believe it," he …