International clean energy initiative launches global biomass resource assessment

A multi-country, government-led initiative dedicated to advancing the global transition to a sustainable, bio-based economy, unveiled a new Global Biomass Resource Assessment, providing groundbreaking data on current and future sustainable biomass supplies around the world.

The results from this new global sustainable supply assessment will allow scientists, policymakers, and industry leaders to explore potential sources of biomass as a foundation for a circular and sustainable global bioeconomy, supporting clean fuels, chemicals, materials and other products. The assessment was conducted by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with funding provided by the U.S. Department of State and managed through DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office on behalf of the CEM Biofuture Initiative and Mission Innovation.

The assessment includes biomass resources available in many developing economies, which often do not have fully advanced biomass industries. It also aims to address the need for internationally accepted benchmarks quantifying sustainable biomass feedstock supplies that can be available to support a growing, circular and climate-smart bioeconomy.

An associated International Feedstocks data-sharing portal provides users with an aggregate analysis of sustainable biomass supplies as documented in more than 49 regional and national reports and covering 55 countries. Based on these sources, more than 2,740 million metric tons of sustainable biomass supplies are currently available. Many governments also analyzed future potential of sustainable biomass. Forty-two nations that estimated supplies for 2030 identified up to 2,120 million metric tons of sustainable biomass, an increase of 431 million metric tons of biomass production over what those nations identified as currently available.

The assessment’s launch was announced on October 2, 2024, by the Clean Energy Ministerial Biofuture Platform Initiative at an event during the 15th Annual G20 CEM and 9th Mission Innovation Forum in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil.

“Global sustainable production and use of biobased fuels, chemicals and products is critical to achieving world-wide greenhouse gas emission reductions,” said CEM Biofuture Platform Initiative Chair and BETO Systems Development & Integration Program Manager Jim Spaeth. “This assessment is the first chapter of a multi-year, multilateral effort to capture global biomass resource data in a single location and easy to access digital online format. We are looking for international collaborators to join us to continue this exciting research moving forward.”

Data are hosted on the BETO-funded Bioenergy Knowledge Discovery Framework, or BioenergyKDF, data portal, maintained by ORNL. The BioenergyKDF is a centralized data hub designed to accelerate bioenergy innovation and sustainable bioeconomy practices. The BioenergyKDF data portal is also home to its premier U.S. biomass report, the Billion-Ton 2023 series, which shares detailed geo-spatial estimates of current and future sustainable biomass resources in the United States.

The CEM Biofuture Platform Initiative was launched at the 11th Clean Energy Ministerial to lead global actions to accelerate the development, scale-up and deployment of sustainable bio-based alternatives to fossil-based fuels, chemicals and materials. Chaired by the U.S. Department of Energy and coordinated by the International Energy Agency, the Initiative provides a forum for policy dialogue and collaboration among leading countries, organizations, academia and the private sector. The Initiative focuses on fostering collaboration, promoting innovation and driving investments in bioenergy and sustainable development.

The BioenergyKDF ensures equitable access to high-quality data that supports breakthroughs in bioenergy research. It offers comprehensive market analyses by feedstock and provides access to pivotal datasets like the Billion-Ton reports. The portal includes intuitive tools that enable users to visualize, analyze, and download data at a county level, showing which energy crops thrive in different U.S. regions. The portal uses modern data-sharing principles — FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable — to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and speed up innovation across sectors.

BETO supports technology research, development and demonstration to accelerate greenhouse gas emissions reductions through the cost-effective and sustainable use of biomass and waste feedstocks across the U.S. economy. BETO is part of DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science. The single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

Media Contact

Stephanie Seay
DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
seaysg@ornl.gov
Office: 865-576-9894