ORNL houses global dataset focused on advancing a bio-based economy
It is part of an assessment that includes biomass resources available in many developing economies, which often do not have fully advanced biomass industries.
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 Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), with funding provided by the U.S. Department of State and managed through Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) 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.
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.
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