Biomass Energy in the Low-Carbon Transition: Pathways, Performance, and Limits

Abstract

Biomass is one of the few renewable resources capable of supplying dispatchable heat, power, and transport fuels while also valorizing agricultural, forestry, and municipal residues. This review synthesizes biomass feedstock classes, dominant conversion routes, environmental performance, and techno-economic trends using literature published between 2000 and 2025. Agricultural residues, forestry by-products, energy crops, algae, and the biodegradable fraction of municipal solid waste are assessed against conversion suitability, efficiency, cost, and lifecycle greenhouse-gas performance. Thermochemical routes such as combustion, gasification, and pyrolysis are compared with biochemical routes including anaerobic digestion and fermentation. The analysis shows that residue- and waste-derived feedstocks generally offer the strongest sustainability case, whereas dedicated crops remain sensitive to land and water constraints. Mature options such as combustion and anaerobic digestion are already commercially relevant, while gasification, pyrolysis, and biorefinery concepts offer higher product flexibility but still face capital and scale-up barriers. Biomass can make a meaningful contribution to decarbonization when deployment prioritizes sustainable sourcing, logistics optimization, and integration with carbon capture. Future progress depends on region-specific feedstock strategies, stable policy support, and system configurations that couple energy production with waste management and negative-emission potential