The Pros and Cons of Bioenergy

Bioenergy can cut fossil fuel use, firm up renewable power, turn wastes into useful energy, and even deliver net‑negative emissions with carbon capture—but its benefits depend heavily on feedstock, land use, and air‑quality controls. Poorly designed projects can increase greenhouse gases, harm biodiversity, compete with food, and lock in polluting infrastructure. Below is a clear view of where bioenergy helps and where it hurts.

What Counts as Bioenergy Today

Bioenergy refers to energy derived from biological material—crops, forestry residues, organic wastes, and biogenic gases. It spans electricity and heat from solid biomass, biogas from anaerobic digestion and landfills, and liquid biofuels for transport. The climate and environmental outcomes hinge on the source material and how it’s grown, collected, converted, and managed across its lifecycle.

Main Pathways in Use

These are the principal ways bioenergy is produced and used across power, heat, and transport, each with distinct sustainability profiles.

• Solid biomass: wood pellets/chips, agricultural and forestry residues, burned for heat or power; sometimes paired with combined heat and power (CHP) for higher efficiency.
• Biogas and biomethane: methane-rich gas from anaerobic digestion of manure, food scraps, wastewater sludge, or upgraded landfill gas; used for heat, power, or injected into gas grids.
• Liquid biofuels: ethanol (e.g., from corn, sugarcane) and biodiesel/renewable diesel (e.g., from used cooking oil, tallow, soy), plus sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) from waste oils, residues, or alcohol‑to‑jet.
• Advanced and emerging routes: cellulosic fuels from non‑food residues, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) for power or fuels, and biochar for soil carbon.

While all are “bioenergy,” their climate, air‑quality, land, and water footprints vary widely; policy and project design increasingly focus on the cleaner, waste‑based and high‑efficiency options.

Advantages of Bioenergy

When sourced and managed well, bioenergy offers several system‑level and local benefits that complement wind, solar, and electrification.

• Dispatchable renewable power and heat: Biomass plants (especially CHP) and biogas engines can ramp to meet demand, supporting grid reliability alongside variable renewables.
• Waste management and methane mitigation: Capturing biogas from manure, food waste, and landfills prevents methane—a potent greenhouse gas—from escaping, while generating useful energy.
• Potential for negative emissions: BECCS can permanently store biogenic CO2, providing net‑negative emissions if feedstocks are sustainable and carbon accounting is robust.
• Critical role in hard‑to‑electrify sectors: Biofuels—especially SAF and some marine fuels—offer near‑term drop‑in options where batteries or green hydrogen are not yet ready at scale.
• Rural income and jobs: Residue collection, digestion facilities, and CHP plants can diversify farm revenues and support local economies when supply chains are sustainable.
• Grid services and resilience: Biogas and biomass can provide frequency response and backup during outages, including microgrids for hospitals or district heating networks.
• Co‑products with additional benefits: Digestate can replace some synthetic fertilizers; biochar can improve some soils and sequester carbon; lignin and CO2 streams can supply industry.
• Energy security and diversification: Domestic wastes and residues reduce exposure to imported fossil fuels and volatile global markets.

These strengths are most reliable when projects prioritize genuine wastes and residues, high conversion efficiency, rigorous methane control, and transparent lifecycle accounting.

Drawbacks and Risks

The most serious concerns arise when bioenergy drives new land conversion, uses inefficient combustion, or relies on weak emissions accounting and oversight.

• Land‑use change and food competition: Converting forests, grasslands, or cropland to energy crops can release large carbon stocks and displace food production, driving indirect emissions.
• Lifecycle emissions uncertainty: Depending on feedstock, farming inputs, transport, and conversion efficiency, total emissions can range from strongly negative (captured methane, BECCS) to worse than fossil fuels (long carbon payback from certain forest harvests or inefficient plants).
• Air pollution: Combustion emits particulate matter (PM2.5), NOx, and other pollutants; poorly controlled plants and residential burning harm local air quality and health.
• Biodiversity and habitat impacts: Intensive harvesting or monoculture energy crops can degrade habitats, reduce species richness, and affect soil carbon and structure.
• Water and fertilizer demand: Some energy crops require substantial irrigation and nitrogen, driving water stress and nitrous oxide emissions—a powerful greenhouse gas.
• Finite sustainable feedstocks: Truly low‑carbon residues and wastes are limited; scaling beyond them can push systems toward riskier land‑use outcomes.
• Methane leakage and “crediting” pitfalls: Biogas systems that leak during storage, upgrading, or pipeline transport can erase climate benefits; over‑crediting avoided methane can distort markets.
• Carbon accounting controversies: Treating all biogenic CO2 as “carbon neutral” at the smokestack ignores timing and land impacts; long payback times for some woody biomass undermine near‑term climate goals.
• Cost and efficiency: Many bioenergy routes have lower energy return and higher costs than wind/solar; without heat use or CCS, standalone biomass power is often inefficient.
• Social equity concerns: Siting incinerators or large biomass plants near vulnerable communities can exacerbate pollution burdens; feedstock harvesting can affect local livelihoods.
• Invasive species and agronomic risks: Some hardy energy crops can spread beyond cultivation; residue removal can increase erosion if not managed.
• Policy uncertainty: Tightening sustainability rules and shifting incentives (e.g., for forest biomass or dairy biogas) can strand assets.

These risks underscore why many agencies now differentiate sharply between waste‑based, high‑efficiency bioenergy and land‑intensive or low‑control applications.

What Experts and Agencies Are Emphasizing (2024–2025)

Recent assessments converge on a cautious, targeted role for bioenergy. The IPCC’s latest reports highlight limited sustainable biomass potential and stress that benefits depend on avoiding land‑use change, protecting ecosystems, and ensuring strong governance. The International Energy Agency notes that “modern bioenergy” remains the largest renewable in total final energy use, but scaling must prioritize wastes, residues, and robust sustainability criteria. In policy, the EU’s updated Renewable Energy Directive (RED III) tightens sustainability rules and scrutiny of forest biomass; the UK is refining support to favor higher‑efficiency uses and BECCS with stricter feedstock criteria; in the United States, Inflation Reduction Act credits are steering investment toward cleaner SAF and biomethane with lifecycle accounting, while programs such as California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard are moving to tighten methane‑leak controls and limit over‑crediting of certain RNG pathways. Overall, the direction is “quality over quantity.”

When Bioenergy Makes Sense

These use cases generally deliver strong climate and air‑quality outcomes when implemented with best practices and verification.

• Capturing methane from manure, wastewater, and landfills with stringent leak detection and repair, covered lagoons, and high destruction efficiency.
• Using genuine wastes and residues (sawmill offcuts, prunings, agricultural by‑products) in high‑efficiency CHP or industrial heat, with sustainable removal rates.
• Producing SAF and renewable diesel from waste lipids and true residues, guided by rigorous lifecycle methods and indirect land‑use safeguards.
• Deploying short‑rotation woody crops or perennials on marginal/degraded land, with biodiversity buffers, minimal irrigation, and low fertilizer use.
• Pairing suitable biomass facilities with CCS (BECCS) where geology, monitoring, and policy frameworks ensure durable storage and full-chain emissions accounting.
• Integrating bioenergy in district heating and microgrids that displace fossil heat and provide resilience during outages.
• Applying the “cascading use” principle: prioritize material uses (wood products) first, then use residues for energy; return nutrients via digestate/biochar where appropriate.

Projects in these categories tend to offer verifiable emissions reductions, better local air outcomes, and credible co‑benefits for farms and forests.

Where to Be Cautious—or Avoid

These practices are frequently linked to weak or negative climate performance, ecological harm, or community impacts.

• Large-scale electricity generation from primary forest biomass, especially clear‑cuts or whole trees with long carbon payback times and limited heat use.
• Food‑crop biofuels that expand cropland or drive indirect land‑use change, eroding or reversing climate benefits.
• Standalone biomass power with low efficiency and no CCS, particularly where it increases local PM2.5 and NOx.
• Incinerating recyclable or compostable waste streams, which can discourage waste reduction and recycling and worsen air pollution.
• Biogas projects without rigorous methane controls across digestion, upgrading, storage, and end use.
• Monoculture energy crops replacing biodiverse habitats or requiring heavy irrigation and fertilizer inputs.

Steering away from these routes reduces the risk of greenwashing, stranded assets, and unintended environmental damage.

Bottom Line

Bioenergy is not inherently good or bad—it’s conditional. The strongest cases center on wastes and residues, high‑efficiency heat and power, methane capture with tight leak control, and carefully designed fuels for sectors like aviation, potentially paired with carbon capture. The weakest cases rely on new land conversion, low‑efficiency combustion, or accounting assumptions that ignore real‑world emissions. With rigorous sustainability rules and smart deployment, bioenergy can play a targeted, complementary role in the clean‑energy transition; without them, it can set climate and nature goals back.

Summary

Pros: dispatchable renewable energy, waste‑to‑energy with methane mitigation, potential negative emissions via BECCS, critical fuels for aviation/shipping, rural economic benefits, and grid resilience. Cons: land‑use change and food competition, uncertain lifecycle emissions, air pollution, biodiversity and water impacts, limited sustainable feedstocks, methane leakage risks, efficiency and cost challenges, and equity concerns. The best outcomes come from waste‑based, high‑efficiency projects with stringent sustainability and emissions controls; broad, land‑intensive expansion should be avoided.

What are the pros and cons of bioenergy?

Bioenergy’s advantages include its status as a renewable, carbon-neutral (if sustainably sourced) energy source that reduces waste, lessens dependence on fossil fuels, creates jobs, and offers a reliable, controllable power source. However, it has significant disadvantages, such as high costs for collection, transport, and infrastructure, potential to cause deforestation, air pollution from combustion, and intense land and water use that can compete with food production.
 
Advantages

• Renewable and abundant: Biomass is a replenishable resource, unlike finite fossil fuels. 
• Carbon neutral: The carbon dioxide released when biomass is burned is absorbed by new plants through photosynthesis, creating a cycle that is not a net increase in atmospheric CO2, according to energypedia. 
• Waste reduction: It can convert organic waste from landfills, agriculture, and industry into energy, diverting materials from disposal sites. 
• Energy independence: By providing an alternative to fossil fuels, bioenergy reduces reliance on imported fuels, notes Technosoft Engineering. 
• Job creation: The bioenergy industry supports jobs in farming, manufacturing, and energy production, says Technosoft Engineering. 
• Reliable power: Unlike intermittent solar or wind power, bioenergy plants can operate continuously, providing a consistent energy supply. 

Disadvantages

• High costs: Opens in new tabCollecting, transporting, and processing biomass can be expensive, as can building the necessary infrastructure. 
• Land and water use: Opens in new tabGrowing dedicated energy crops requires significant land and water resources, which can lead to competition with food crops and impact soil health, according to the USDA Climate Hubs. 
• Air pollution: Opens in new tabBurning biomass can release particulate matter and other pollutants that harm air quality and human health. 
• Deforestation and habitat loss: Opens in new tabUnsustainable harvesting of biomass, especially wood, can lead to deforestation and destroy ecosystems, notes Carrier Vibrating Equipment, Inc.. 
• Efficiency issues: Opens in new tabBioenergy can sometimes be less efficient than fossil fuels, with the energy produced in the process being less than the energy required to create it, says SolarReviews. 

What are some pros and cons of biofuels?

Advantages include sourcing, renewability. The disadvantages covered include production costs and resources. Biomass and biofuels have been used to generate energy since ancient times. Examples include ancient people burning wood and branches to generate fire.

Is bio energy good or bad?

Although biomass is a renewable source, it isn’t necessarily considered a ‘clean’ source of energy. This is due to the fact that it can release significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions like methane and other air pollutants into the atmosphere.

What are the negative effects of bioenergy?

Wood pellet facilities pump out huge amounts of harmful air pollution, including dust, particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, and particularly toxic or hazardous air pollutants like acrolein and methanol. The pollutants can cause asthma and respiratory illnesses in nearby communities.