So, how much of our energy supply comes from biomass today?
Worldwide, biomass is the fourth largest energy resource after coal, oil, and natural gas – estimated at about 14% of global primary energy (and much higher in many developing countries). In the U.S., biomass today provides about 3-4% of primary energy (depending on the method of calculation). Biomass is used for heating (such as wood stoves in homes and for process heat in bioprocessing industries), cooking (especially in many parts of the developing world), transportation (fuels such as ethanol) and, increasingly, for electric power production. Installed capacity of biomass power generation worldwide is about 35,000 MW, with about 7,000 MW in the United States derived from forest-product-industry and agricultural residues (plus an additional 2,500 MW of municipal solid waste-fired capacity, which is often not counted as part of biomass power, and 500 MW of landfill gas-fired and other capacity). Much of this 7,000 MW capacity is presently found in the pulp and paper industry, in comb
