When Adarsha Shivakumar won the 2006 California Spelling Bee at age 13, he didn't spend his $600 prize on video games or the latest electronic gadget. He used it to buy seeds.

Adarsha, now a junior at College Preparatory School in Oakland, was only 12 when he began researching crops that poor Indian farmers might be able to grow instead of tobacco, which has led to illegal harvesting of timber from India's national wildlife refuge. He saw that devastation firsthand during a family visit to India.

Back home in Walnut Creek, Adarsha learned that seeds from the Jatropha curcas plant could be converted into biofuel, and that the shrub grew well in the tropics. "I thought, 'There could be no harm in buying a couple hundred seeds,' " he said.

With his spelling bee money and some baby-sitting pocket change, Adarsha founded Project Jatropha with his younger sister, Apoorva Rangan.

Three years later, more than 54 farmers in two villages have begun to grow the drought-resistant shrub. This year, he said, they planted a total of 12,300 Jatropha seedlings. He said Labland Biotechs, a biotechnology company that plans to convert the seeds into biofuel, has agreed to pay the farmers 10 rupees (about 25 cents) per kilogram for the crop.

Adarsha said community leaders in India were skeptical of the project at first — in large part, because of the improbably young age of its founders — but that they gradually bought into the idea. It helped that the project was backed by Parivarthana, an organization that works with Indian farmers, and Adarsha's parents, who were born in the area and are fluent in Kannada, the local language.

Adarsha and his sister have won a number of awards for their work. This week, Adarsha was one of six people in North America to win the Brower Youth Award for his environmental leadership. Adarsha says he is putting all of the prize money, $3,000, back into the project.

"He's really a remarkable student," said his adviser, environmental science teacher Adrianna Smyth. "He's got this innate brilliance, but he's also a really hard worker and he has an amazing level of curiosity."

Smyth says not every teenager has the energy or the drive to execute an idea of this magnitude. Still, she said, she makes sure to let her students know about Project Jatropha; she thinks it will inspire local environmental efforts.

Adarsha, whose mind races so fast he sometimes trips over his words, said he was inspired to take action by "An Inconvenient Truth," former Vice President Al Gore's 2006 film about climate change. He says he thinks today's teenagers have no choice but to delve into the world's environmental and social problems.

"Resource depletion, the fresh water crisis, poverty, overpopulation — any one of these problems can wipe out humanity," he said. "My generation has to take action now. I like being alive."

"There's no shortage of ideas," he added. "There seems to be a conspicuous shortage of action."

Have an idea? Adarsha asked. "Just go and do it."

Learn more about Project Jatropha and how you can help at projectjatropha.com.