Biomass Energy: What It Is, How It Works, Pros and Cons

This article contains affiliate links: if you buy through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. Learn more.

Biomass energy is energy from organic material made by plants and animals: wood, crop waste, garbage, manure and fuels like ethanol. The plants stored sunlight as chemical energy while they grew. We release it by burning biomass for heat and electricity, or by turning it into liquid and gas fuels.

It is the oldest energy source people have, and it is probably closer to your daily life than you think. The logs in a wood stove, the pellets in a pellet stove, the ethanol blended into almost every gallon of gasoline and the gas captured at your local landfill are all biomass. This guide explains where biomass energy comes from, how it is used in the U.S. and around the world, what it means for your home, and why it is both useful and debated.

Biomass energy at a glance

• What it is: renewable organic material from plants and animals, used as fuel.
• Where it comes from: wood and wood waste, farm crops and residues, biofuels, the organic part of trash, animal manure and sewage.
• Renewable? Yes, as long as plants are regrown at least as fast as they are used.
• U.S. share: about 5% of all U.S. primary energy use in 2025, and about 1% of U.S. utility-scale electricity (U.S. EIA).
• Main upside: it can be stored and used on demand, and it turns waste into useful energy.
• Main downside: burning it creates smoke and air pollution, and its climate benefit depends on how the biomass is grown and harvested.

How biomass energy works

Biomass is stored sunlight. Through photosynthesis, a growing plant uses the sun’s energy to turn carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil into sugars, starches and wood. That energy sits in the plant’s chemical bonds. When animals eat plants, some of it passes into manure and fats. When we use biomass for energy, we break those bonds and release the energy, mostly as heat, and the carbon goes back into the air as carbon dioxide.

There are four main ways to do it:

1. Direct burning (combustion). The simplest and most common method. Burn wood, pellets, crop waste or trash to heat a room or a building, or to boil water into steam that spins a turbine and makes electricity.
2. Thermochemical conversion. Heat biomass with little or no oxygen to break it down into a fuel gas, oils or charcoal-like solids that can be burned or refined.
3. Chemical conversion. Process vegetable oils and animal fats into liquid fuels such as biodiesel and renewable diesel.
4. Biological conversion. Let yeast ferment sugars and starches into ethanol, or let bacteria break down manure, food scraps and sewage without oxygen (anaerobic digestion) to make biogas. Landfills make biogas naturally as buried trash rots.

Biogas is a mix of mostly methane and carbon dioxide; EIA says raw biogas is about 45% to 65% methane, depending on what it is made from. Cleaned up to at least 90% methane, it becomes renewable natural gas (RNG), and gas injected into pipelines is typically cleaned to 96% to 98% methane, so it can be used just like fossil natural gas.

A short history of biomass energy

For nearly all of human history, biomass was energy. Wood fires cooked food, heated homes and, later, fed forges and steam engines. According to EIA, biomass was the largest source of total annual U.S. energy consumption until the mid-1800s. A few other milestones:

• 1897: Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine and experimented with running it on vegetable oil.
• 1908: Henry Ford’s Model T was designed to run on a mix of gasoline and alcohol (ethanol).
• 1970s: oil embargoes and price spikes revived interest in ethanol and other homegrown fuels.
• 2005 and 2007: Congress created the Renewable Fuel Standard and then expanded it, requiring rising volumes of biofuels in U.S. transportation fuel.
• May 2020: EPA’s tighter “Step 2” smoke limits for new wood stoves took effect.

Types of biomass

EIA splits U.S. biomass energy into three groups. In 2025 the country used about 4,853 trillion British thermal units (Btu) of biomass energy, broken down like this:

Type	Examples	Share of U.S. biomass energy, 2025 (EIA)
Biofuels	Ethanol, biodiesel, renewable diesel	53% (about 2,569 trillion Btu)
Wood and wood waste	Firewood, pellets, bark, sawdust, wood chips, paper mill residues	39% (about 1,912 trillion Btu)
Waste	The organic part of municipal solid waste, animal manure, sewage	8% (about 372 trillion Btu)

Liquid biofuels are big enough to have their own page: see biofuel energy for ethanol, biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel. Burning trash for power is covered in waste-to-energy. The rest of this page focuses on wood, pellets, crop waste and biogas, the forms closest to home heating.

Where biomass energy is used today

In the United States, biomass supplied about 5% of total primary energy use in 2025, according to EIA. By sector, industry used the most (48%), mainly wood-products and paper mills that burn their own bark, sawdust and residues for steam and electricity. Transportation came next (35%, almost all biofuels), then homes (8%), electric power plants (7%) and businesses (3%). Biomass made about 1% of U.S. utility-scale electricity in 2025. The U.S. is also a major exporter of wood pellets, shipping about 9.4 million tons abroad in 2025, much of it to power plants overseas.

Wood alone provided about 2% of U.S. energy in 2025. At home, EIA reports that about 11 million households, or 8.9%, used wood for energy in 2020, and about 2.2 million of them used it as their main heating fuel.

Around the world, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says modern solid bioenergy, such as pellets and wood chips burned in efficient boilers and industry, met about 3.5% of global final energy use in 2023, making it the most-used modern renewable fuel in the world. The International Renewable Energy Agency counted about 154 gigawatts of bioenergy power capacity worldwide at the end of 2025. There is also a less happy side: more than 2 billion people still lacked access to clean cooking in 2023, according to the IEA, and many of them rely on traditional fuels such as wood and charcoal, burned in open fires or basic stoves.

Biomass energy at home

Biomass is one of the few energy sources a homeowner can use directly. Here is what is practical, and what to watch for.

Wood stoves, inserts and pellet stoves

A modern stove is a very different machine from an old one. EPA’s current limit for new wood heaters, effective May 2020, is 2.0 grams of smoke per hour (2.5 g/h when tested with cordwood). Older, uncertified stoves give off roughly 15 to 30 grams per hour. If you heat with wood, an EPA-certified stove or fireplace insert is the single biggest upgrade: look for the permanent metal EPA label on the back, or check EPA’s database of certified wood heaters. Pellet stoves burn small, uniform pellets fed from a hopper; before you buy one for backup heat, check in the manual how it behaves in a power outage.

Installing a stove means a proper chimney or vent, clearances from walls and floors, and usually a permit. Have it installed by a certified hearth professional, follow the maker’s manual, and get the chimney inspected and cleaned regularly.

Burn it right

EPA’s wood-burning advice is simple and makes a real difference to smoke, heat and safety:

• Burn only dry, split, seasoned wood. Season it for at least six months, stacked outdoors with just the top covered.
• Aim for a moisture content below 20%, and check it with a wood moisture meter.
• Build hot fires, not smoldering ones, and keep the stove door closed except to load or stoke.
• Never burn trash, plastic, cardboard with coatings, plywood, or painted or pressure-treated wood.
• Put ashes in a covered metal container outdoors, keep a fire extinguisher nearby, and keep curtains, furniture and papers well away from the stove.
• Wood smoke contains carbon monoxide. The Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends battery-operated CO alarms on every level of the home and outside sleeping areas.

Other home options

Composting food scraps doesn’t make usable energy for most households, but it keeps waste out of landfills, where it would rot into methane. Small home biogas digesters exist, but they need steady feedstock, warmth and care, and are rarely practical in U.S. homes. In parts of the Northeast, heating oil is now blended with biodiesel (sold as “Bioheat”); see our biofuel energy page. If you rent, you can’t add a stove, but you can still cut heating costs with the ideas in our energy-saving tips.

Money in 2026

From 2023 through 2025, efficient wood and pellet stoves could qualify for a federal tax credit of 30%, up to $2,000 a year, under the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit (Section 25C). The One Big Beautiful Bill Act ended that credit for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so there is no federal stove credit in 2026. Some states and local air districts run wood-stove change-out programs that pay you to replace an old stove; search DSIRE (dsireusa.org) and your state’s air quality agency. Our tax credits and grants section tracks the changes.

Products for heating safely with wood and pellets

If you burn wood or pellets, these inexpensive tools help you burn cleaner and stay safe. They are real products sold on Amazon; prices are what we saw in October 2026 and change often.

EPA’s rule of thumb is firewood below 20% moisture, and a pin meter is the only easy way to know. The General Tools MMD4E (about $40, seen October 2026) reads 5% to 50% moisture in wood: split a log and push the pins into the fresh face for a fair reading. A magnetic stove-top thermometer like the Midwest Hearth model (about $25) shows whether your fire is too cool and smoky or too hot; the maker says its zones help prevent overheating and minimize creosote. Neither replaces working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.

Check the General Tools MMD4E price on Amazon

Biomass energy pros and cons

Pros	Cons
Renewable when forests and crops are regrown	Only climate-friendly if harvested sustainably; overharvesting causes deforestation
Can be stored and used any time, unlike sun and wind	Burning releases smoke, particulate matter and carbon monoxide
Turns waste (sawdust, crop residue, trash, manure) into energy	Bulky, lower-energy fuel that is costly to haul long distances
Capturing landfill and manure methane keeps a strong greenhouse gas out of the air	Energy crops can compete with food crops for land, water and fertilizer
Homegrown fuel that supports farms and forest industries	Wood heat takes work: buying or splitting wood, loading, ash removal, chimney care

Environmental and safety impact

Is biomass carbon neutral? Sometimes, roughly. EIA explains the idea: the plants grown for biomass capture almost as much carbon dioxide through photosynthesis as is released when the biomass is burned. International greenhouse gas accounting therefore leaves biomass combustion out of national totals. But the balance depends on the details. If wood is harvested faster than trees regrow, forests shrink and the carbon stays in the air. Regrowing a forest takes decades, while burning takes minutes. Fertilizer, harvesting and shipping add emissions. Using true waste, like sawdust or crop residue that would rot anyway, gives the clearest benefit.

Air quality is the bigger everyday issue. Wood smoke contains carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter, which are harmful to breathe. That is why EPA sets emission limits for wood heaters and recommends checking your local air quality forecast before you burn.

Waste and methane. Burning municipal trash shrinks the volume going to landfills, but it creates air pollution and an ash that can concentrate metals like lead and cadmium, so EPA requires waste-to-energy plants to use scrubbers, fabric filters and electrostatic precipitators and tests the ash. Capturing methane from landfills, sewage plants and manure and burning it for energy has a clear benefit, because methane is a far stronger greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide it becomes.

How much does biomass energy cost?

For a household, the cost of biomass heat depends far more on local fuel prices and your equipment than on any national number. Firewood is cheapest if you cut and split your own, and costs much more if you buy seasoned wood delivered in small amounts. Because cord and pellet prices vary so much by region and season, we don’t quote a single figure; compare local cord and pellet-ton prices with your natural gas, propane, heating oil or electric rates, and remember that an efficient, certified stove gets more heat from every load.

Upfront, plan on the stove or insert plus installation, chimney or venting work and permits; get quotes from certified installers. From 2026, there is no federal tax credit to offset this (see above), though some state change-out programs help.

For electricity, biomass is a small slice of U.S. supply, about 1% of utility-scale generation in 2025. Much of the country’s biomass power and steam is made where the fuel is already on hand: EIA notes that wood-products and paper mills burn their own mill waste to make steam and electricity, which cuts what they spend on purchased fuel and power.

The future of biomass energy

The real growth is in fuels, not logs. The IEA expects global modern solid bioenergy use to grow by about a fifth, to around 18 exajoules, by 2030, and liquid biofuels to expand most for aviation and shipping, which are hard to electrify. In the U.S., renewable natural gas from landfills, farms and wastewater plants is counted under the Renewable Fuel Standard, and companies are converting refineries to make renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel. Researchers are also working on making fuel from non-food plants and residues (cellulosic biomass), but EIA notes that as of the end of 2022 there was no commercial cellulosic ethanol production in the U.S. because of cost and technical hurdles.

How biomass compares with other energy sources

Source	Renewable?	Can be stored and used on demand?	U.S. utility-scale electricity, 2025 (EIA)	Main home use
Biomass	Yes, if regrown	Yes	About 1%	Wood and pellet stoves
Solar	Yes	Only with batteries	About 7%	Rooftop panels, portable panels
Geothermal	Yes	Yes, runs steadily	Less than 1%	Ground-source heat pumps
Coal	No	Yes	About 17%	Rare today

Biomass energy FAQs

What are examples of biomass energy?

Firewood and wood pellets burned for heat, sawdust and bark burned at paper mills, corn turned into ethanol, soybean oil and used cooking oil turned into biodiesel, methane captured from landfills and manure, and the organic part of trash burned at waste-to-energy plants. In 2025, biofuels made up about 53% of U.S. biomass energy and wood about 39%.

Is biomass renewable?

Yes, because plants and trees can be regrown and waste is produced every day. But it is only sustainable if it is used no faster than it regrows. If forests are cut faster than they recover, biomass stops being renewable in practice and adds carbon to the atmosphere.

Is burning wood bad for the environment?

It can be. Wood smoke contains fine particles and carbon monoxide that harm health, especially from old stoves, which emit about 15 to 30 grams of smoke per hour versus 2 to 2.5 grams for new EPA-certified models. Burning dry, seasoned wood in a certified stove cuts smoke sharply. Its climate impact depends on whether the wood is regrown.

How much of U.S. energy comes from biomass?

About 5% of total U.S. primary energy consumption in 2025, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or roughly 4,853 trillion Btu. Most went to industry and transportation fuels. Biomass produced only about 1% of U.S. utility-scale electricity that year.

What is the difference between biomass and biofuel?

Biomass is the raw organic material: wood, crops, waste, manure. Biofuels are fuels made from biomass, usually liquids like ethanol and biodiesel used in vehicles, or biogas. So every biofuel is biomass energy, but not all biomass is a biofuel; a log in your stove is biomass used directly.

Is there a tax credit for wood or pellet stoves in 2026?

No federal credit. The 30% credit for efficient biomass stoves, capped at $2,000 a year, ended for stoves placed in service after December 31, 2025. Some states and air districts offer change-out rebates for replacing old stoves; check DSIRE and your state air agency.

Keep exploring

Biomass is one of several renewable energy sources, and all of it starts as chemical energy stored by plants. Compare it with the other types of energy, learn the basics in Energy 101, or see how energy storage helps homes ride out outages.