Bioenergy is
renewable energy made available from materials derived from biological sources.
Biomass is any organic material which has stored sunlight in the form of chemical energy. As a
fuel it may include wood, wood waste, straw, and other crop residues, manure, sugarcane, and many other by-products from a variety of agricultural processes. By 2010, there was 35 GW (47,000,000 hp) of globally installed
bioenergy capacity for electricity generation, of which 7 GW (9,400,000 hp) was in the United States.
In its most narrow sense it is a synonym to biofuel, which is
fuel derived from biological sources. In its broader sense it includes biomass, the biological material used as a biofuel, as well as the social, economic, scientific and technical fields associated with using biological sources for energy. This is a common misconception, as
bioenergy is the energy extracted from the biomass, as the
biomass is the
fuel and the
bioenergy is the energy contained in the fuel
Relevant Topics in General Science