A La Crosse man's high tech journey takes him out east, then back to La Crosse and has him trying to use nature to his advantage.

Harry "Tinker" Foust has spent his life working on alternative fuels and it started when he was a boy.

"My father was in the garage business so we had lots of tools around and I used to do a lot of tinkering."

He says his love of engineering lead him to one of the nation's most revered schools.

"I graduated from M.I.T. in 1956. My first job was with Ford Motor Company.”

After working for Ford he went on to work for Trane developing alternative fuel sources. After the oil scare in the late 1970s ended, Foust lost his job but never stopped thinking green.

"We will have to look for alternate means for our transportation. Hydrogen is one that's high on the list."

He started his own company, INOV8, and picked back up on his old project, known as ocean thermal energy, again, which he says could help solve the current energy need and power a hydrogen cell car in the future.

"It works on what called a ranking cycle, where it up boils the cold water so you have hot and cold water fight together and will boil pressurized liquid ammonia and that pressurized ammonia is forced through a turbine and you can generate electricity."

Foust maybe 80 years old but he says he's in great shape and back to the business he loves.

"I considered myself an environmentalist long before it got to be a political issue."

Foust says if successful, his project could be worth billions of dollars.