Bioenergy is used to generate electricity, produce heat for homes and factories, and fuel vehicles. It is the largest source of renewable energy in the world, accounting for about 55% of all renewable energy and over 6% of global energy supply. The ways it gets used range from burning wood pellets in a household stove to converting agricultural waste into gas that powers an electrical grid.
Generating Electricity From Biomass
Most electricity from biomass comes from direct combustion. Organic material like wood chips, crop residues, or dedicated energy crops is burned in a boiler to create high-pressure steam, which spins a turbine connected to a generator. This is essentially the same process coal plants use, and some coal facilities blend biomass into their fuel supply through a practice called co-firing, which lets them cut emissions without building new infrastructure.
Two other conversion methods are gaining ground. Gasification heats solid biomass at high temperatures with very little oxygen, producing a combustible gas (mostly carbon monoxide and hydrogen) that can replace natural gas in power turbines. Pyrolysis works similarly but at lower temperatures and with zero oxygen, yielding a crude bio-oil that can substitute for fuel oil or diesel in generators and industrial engines.
A third pathway skips combustion entirely. In anaerobic digestion, bacteria break down organic waste inside sealed, oxygen-free tanks called digesters. The process produces biogas, a mixture that is 50 to 75 percent methane, the same energy-carrying molecule in natural gas. That biogas can be burned on-site to generate electricity or purified and injected into existing natural gas pipelines.
Heating Homes and Buildings
Solid biofuels like firewood and wood pellets are a major source of residential heat worldwide. Pellet stoves, wood log boilers, and fireplace inserts rated under 100 kilowatts provide space heating and hot water in millions of homes, particularly in Northern Europe and North America. These appliances have improved significantly over the past two decades, with modern pellet boilers achieving combustion efficiencies that rival oil and gas furnaces while producing far less particulate matter than older wood stoves.
This type of heating also takes pressure off electrical grids. As more sectors electrify, keeping some heating demand on biomass reduces peak electricity loads, especially during cold snaps when both heating and lighting demand surge at the same time.
Powering Industry
Bioenergy supplied about 6% of global industrial energy in 2023, roughly 11 exajoules. That share is projected to climb to 9.4% by 2030. The heaviest users are pulp and paper mills (which burn their own wood waste), food and tobacco processing, and cement production. In New Zealand, for example, one cement plant replaced coal with biomass as its primary fuel source. Danish dairies have done the same with wood chips.
Industrial applications often need sustained, high-temperature heat, which is harder to deliver with wind or solar electricity. Biomass combustion and gasification can reach the temperatures these processes require, making bioenergy one of the few renewable options for sectors that are otherwise difficult to decarbonize.
Fueling Transportation
Liquid biofuels are the main way bioenergy enters the transport sector. Global consumption sat at about 2.3 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2023 and is projected to more than double by 2030, driven largely by road transport. The two dominant fuels are bioethanol, typically blended with gasoline, and biodiesel, blended with conventional diesel.
First-generation biofuels come from food crops: corn and sugarcane for ethanol, rapeseed and soybean oil for biodiesel. Second-generation biofuels use non-food sources like agricultural residues, wood waste, and used cooking oil, sidestepping the food-versus-fuel debate. Third-generation biofuels, still mostly at pilot scale, are derived from microalgae and cyanobacteria that naturally produce lipids convertible into high-energy fuels.
The biggest growth area is sustainable aviation fuel. Heavy-duty trucking, shipping, and aviation are difficult to electrify because batteries are too heavy or too limited in range. Cellulosic biomass, the fibrous, non-edible parts of plants, is a promising feedstock for producing drop-in liquid fuels that work in existing jet engines and ship diesel systems without modification.
Turning Waste Into Energy
Anaerobic digestion does double duty: it manages waste and produces energy at the same time. Feedstocks include animal manure, sewage sludge, food processing scraps, restaurant grease, crop residues, and consumer food waste. Multiple materials can be combined in a single digester through co-digestion, which boosts gas output from materials that would be hard to break down on their own.
The biogas produced can generate electricity, provide direct heat, or power cooling systems. When purified to remove carbon dioxide and trace gases, it becomes biomethane, functionally identical to fossil natural gas and compatible with existing pipelines and appliances. For farms and food processors, digesters also reduce the volume and odor of waste while producing a nutrient-rich digestate that works as fertilizer.
Carbon Removal Through BECCS
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, known as BECCS, pairs biomass power generation with technology that traps the carbon dioxide released during combustion and injects it into underground geological formations. The logic is straightforward: plants absorb CO₂ as they grow, that carbon is released when the biomass is burned for energy, and capturing it before it reaches the atmosphere results in a net removal of CO₂ from the air.
Climate models from the International Energy Agency suggest that at least 2 billion tons of CO₂ per year need to be removed by BECCS by 2050 to keep global warming below 2°C. The theoretical upper bound, estimated by the IPCC, is 10 to 15 billion tons per year. BECCS remains one of the few technologies that can generate energy and pull carbon out of the atmosphere simultaneously, though scaling it up depends on sustainable biomass supply and available geological storage sites.
Traditional Biomass and Its Risks
Not all bioenergy use is modern or efficient. About 2.1 billion people, roughly a quarter of the world’s population, still cook over open fires or inefficient stoves fueled by wood, animal dung, crop waste, or charcoal. This traditional biomass burning is a separate category from the modern bioenergy discussed above, and it carries serious consequences.
Household air pollution from these cooking methods caused an estimated 2.9 million deaths in 2021, including over 309,000 children under five. The health effects include stroke, heart disease, chronic lung disease, and lung cancer. The soot and methane produced are also potent short-lived climate pollutants that contribute to both local air quality problems and global warming. Gathering fuel, which typically falls to women and children, consumes hours each day and limits time for education and income-generating work.
The distinction matters: global bioenergy statistics that exclude traditional biomass put modern bioenergy at about 4.5% of total final energy consumption in 2023, with projections reaching 9.5% by 2030. Policies in the European Union require bioenergy to meet specific greenhouse gas savings thresholds to qualify as renewable. Facilities operating after January 2021 must deliver at least 65% emissions savings for transport biofuels and 70% for electricity and heating, rising to 80% for power and heat plants starting in 2026.