EIA reports biomass, waste fuel made up 2 percent of US electricity generation in 2016

Biomass and waste fuels generated 71.4 billion kilowatthours of U.S. electricity in 2016, which equals 2 percent of total generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) recently released annual electric power data.

EIA defines biomass fuels as all non-fossil, carbon-based energy sources and categorizes as all other non-biogenic wastes used for energy generation as waste fuels.

Wood solids made up approximately one-third of biomass and waste electricity. Most wood solids come from logging and mill residues; wood, paper, and furniture manufacturing; or discarded large timber products, such as railway ties, utility poles, and marine pilings.

Most wood-derived fuels are byproducts of making paper-related products.

The most common wood-derived fuel is black liquor, a byproduct of the kraft pulping process that accounted for 27 percent of 2016 biomass- and waste-generated electricity.

Other papermaking byproducts used as fuel include sludge waste, wood-waste liquids, and other biomass liquids. Combined they generated less than 0.5 percent of 2016 biomass-generated electricity.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) from landfills accounted for 20 percent of biomass- and waste-generated electricity in 2016. An estimated 51 percent of MSW-based electricity came from biogenic sources such as wood, paper, food, rubber, and yard trimmings.

Landfill gas, produced by decomposing organic material in landfills, provided approximately 16 percent of 2016 biomass-generated electricity.

Other biogenic fuels provided 5 percent of biomass-generated electricity. This includes biomass gas generation from wastewater treatment plants, byproducts of producing ethanol, crop-based and wood-based wastes and agricultural biomass such as field crop residues and animal excretions.

Besides non-biogenic municipal waste, the most significant non-biogenic waste fuel is tire-derived fuel, which has one of the highest relative heat contents of any generating fuel. Less than 2 percent of biomass-generated electricity in 2016 came from tire-derived fuel.