In the seemingly never-ending search for alternative energy sources, leaders in one American city are turning to the family pet for help.

The potential power source: dog poop.

Officials in San Francisco are hoping that the longtime shoe-bottom scourge will soon become a source of fuel for natural gas appliances like stoves and heaters.

In what would be the first such experiment in the nation, the city has asked a garbage company to design a pilot program to pick up droppings in a popular dog park for conversion to methane gas.

The company, Norcal Waste, says the project is in the early stages, but that the plan would involve placing biodegradable bags and dog-waste carts in the park. Dog-walkers could then use the bags to scoop their dog’s droppings before placing them in the carts. The waste would then go to a methane digester, a tank that uses bacteria to create the gas.

The suggestion of a solution to the age-old problem of pet poop drew chuckles from New York City officials and dog owners. “Only in San Francisco,” the chairman of the City Council’s Sanitation Committee, Council Member Michael McMahon, said, joking that as a dog owner and veteran poop-scooper, “I understand what’s driving this proposal.”

Whether such a program would be feasible in pet-friendly New York remains to be seen, Mr. McMahon said. “We will watch it closely, and you never know,” he said. “You definitely need new solutions to old problems.”

A bigger problem in the five boroughs, Mr. McMahon said, is compliance with the city’s pooper scoop laws, which require dog owners and walkers to clean up after their pooch or face up to $100 in fines. “We have to solve that problem first,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the city’s Sanitation Department said that between 17% and 18% of the city’s residential waste is recycled, and there have been no discussions about converting pet waste to energy.

In Washington Square Park yester day, dog walkers welcomed the idea of pet poo as energy, albeit with a New York sense of humor. “It would be hard to collect it, but they could start with these two,” Rona Smih, 58, said, gesturing to her daughter’s two 100-pound Burmese mountain dogs rough-housing beside her. “They could probably heat half of Manhattan.”

Anton Gold, 30, said he would be in favor of the idea, so long as someone else had to scoop the poop. “If you could let your dog poop in the street and then someone would pick it up for energy, then I’m all for it,” he said. Mr. Gold said having special cans for dog waste is a good idea, but could prove problematic to enforce. “You know some jerk will put a slurpie in there and ruin everything.”

Ki Rohrich, 38, said using pet feces for energy is a “great idea.”

“I guess if you want to do something with it you might as well create energy,” she said.

Others also applauded the proposal, but with one key condition: “As long as it doesn’t smell,” joked Kate Davies, 35.

In San Francisco, the idea for the waste conversion program is part of a broader effort to completely divert waste from landfills by 2020. In the past decade, the city has boosted its percentage of recycled waste to more than 60% of all trash. After seeing the findings of a trash study last year, city officials realized they would need to deal with the dirty business of pet poo if they wanted to accomplish the goal.

The study found that animal byproducts comprised nearly 4% of San Francisco’s trash, a number that surprised city officials, a spokesman for Norcal Waste, Robert Reed, said. “That was higher than expected,” he said. The question, Mr. Reed said, became: “How can we deal with the degradable material and do something useful with it?”

While the program would be unprecedented for a major American city, some European countries and dairy farms in America are known to process animal waste.