14 DAY TRIAL // The United States' biomass energy consumption upped by over 60% between 2002 and 2013, the country's Energy Information Administration argues in a report shared with the public this past March 18.
Thus, biomass is said to have accounted for roughly 50% of the renewable energy consumed by the country and for 5% of the United States’ overall energy use back in 2013.
On its website, the Administration goes on to detail that, as shown by data at hand, biomass energy consumption has developed to such an extent chiefly due to the fact that the biofuels industry had really taken off in recent years.
“This growth is almost entirely due to increased consumption of biomass to produce biofuels, mainly ethanol but also a smaller amount of biodiesel and other biomass-based diesel fuels,” the Administration writes.
Specifically, it would appear that, between 2002 and 2013, the amount of biomass energy converted to biofuels in this country grew by about 500%.
Thus, it is said that, on average, some 60% of the energy in feedstocks goes into making deliverable biofuels, the Energy Information Administration claims.
According to the specialists who pieced together said report, ethanol is, at least for the time being, the country's most popular biofuel.
However, biodiesel and other biomass-based diesel fuels are not exactly sitting in a corner and complaining about how everybody keeps ignoring them either.
Of the biofuels that are produced in the United States, most are used by the transportation industry. More precisely, they serve to make blended transportation fuels, i.e. ethanol mixed with motor gasoline or biodiesel blended with diesel fuel.
However, some of the biodiesel made in the country ends up being used as heating oil.
Interestingly enough, corn is the chief raw material for the production of ethanol in said country. By comparison, the biodiesel industry is largely supported by soybean oil.
Presently, the three major biomass energy sources in this country are as follows: wood, waste, and organic raw material inputs, i.e. feedstocks.
The Energy Information Administration stresses the fact that the wood used as a biomass energy source includes wood-derived fuels such as charcoal and byproducts resulting from paper production.
Waste, on the other hand, includes municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, agricultural byproducts and other similar sources, it goes on to detail.
Some two thirds of this wood energy supports industrial processes. On the other hand, nearly all the waste energy produced in the United States goes into electric generation or industrial processes.