A sign on the door of Mike Hart’s office in Davis, California, reads “6 percent of the world’s energy will come from this basement.”

It’s a bold statement from a bold guy, and it refers to Hart’s hope that his Sierra Energy Corp.’s system of turning landfill waste into clean-burning synthetic gas can one day provide a sizable percentage of the world’s energy. Considering that his startup has yet to get any of its alternative energy technologies into mass production, it’s an audacious, almost ridiculous, prediction. But Hart insists the goal is feasible. “The technology is dead simple,” he says. “It’s just a matter of access to capital.”

To get that capital, Hart, who also runs Sierra Railroad, one of California’s oldest train lines, is focusing first on developing a cleaner way to make steel and, in the process, is helping address China’s environmental crisis. China has the largest steel industry in the world, contributing to acid rain and other health threats across the country and producing roughly 2 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases.

Sierra Energy created a process called Fastox, which requires 50 percent less coke—a substance derived from the extremely dirty process of burning coal—while potentially increasing efficiency by as much as 40 percent.

In addition, the clean-burning synthetic gas created in the process can be used as a source of clean energy for power plants, thus replacing the need for coal. “The added advantage is that the gas created will be directly useful to making power,” says Hart, who helped introduce non-petroleum-based biodiesel to the railroad industry in 2001. “The net effect is an enormous reduction in emissions.” The only problem is that Fastox has yet to be tested in an industrial environment.

In the past few years, Hart has tried unsuccessfully to persuade U.S. steelmakers to help him develop the first working prototype. All he needs is a single steel blast furnace and a $5 million investment, but Hart says U.S. firms are reluctant to be the first ones to try it out.

“Americans have become totally risk-averse,” Hart says. “They all asked, ‘Where else is it being done?’ ”

Hart began thinking of trying to develop Fastox overseas and naturally looked to China, where the steelmaking industry has increasingly been migrating in the wake of environmental reforms and related lawsuits in the U.S. and Europe. Last year, a friend put Hart in touch with Margaret Wong, president of the McWong Environmental Energy Group, which connects California-based tech companies with companies in China. She, in turn, introduced Hart to representatives from three of China’s largest steel manufacturers—BaoSteel, Bayisteel (a subsidiary of BaoSteel), and Jian Steel.

For two weeks in January, Hart traveled from Shanghai to Urumqi, in far northwest China, wining and dining executives from the three companies (“My liver is slowly recovering,” says Hart). All three readily agreed to join in the development and testing of a Fastox prototype. With roughly 1,000 blast furnaces in China, Sierra Energy has a potential market of $1 billion if it can get all of the country’s steel companies on board—that is, if the prototype works.