I. INTRODUCTION

As late as the mid 1800s, biomass supplied the vast majority of the world’s energy and fuel needs and only started to be phased out in industrialized countries as the fossil fuel era began, slowly at first and then at a rapid rate. But with the onset of the First Oil Shock in the mid 1970s, biomass was again realized by many governments and policy makers to be a viable, domestic, energy resource that has the potential of reducing oil consumption and imports and improving the balance of payments and deficit problems caused by depen­dency on imported oil. For example, the contribution of biomass energy to U. S. energy consumption in the late 1970s was over 850,000 BOE/day, or more than 2% of total energy consumption at that time. By 1990, it had increased to about 1.4 million BOE/day, or 3.3% of energy consumption, and conservative projections indicate that by the year 2000, biomass energy consumption is expected to increase to 2.0 million BOE/day (Klass, 1994). Other industrialized countries have also increased biomass energy consump­tion. Canada, for example, consumed about 134,000 BOE/day of biomass energy, or 3% of its total energy demand in the late 1970s, and by 1992 had

increased consumption to 250,000 BOE/day, or 4.4% of total energy demand. Although biomass energy has continued to be utilized in Third World countries as a source of fuels and energy for many years, it has become a renewable carbon resource for energy and fuels once again for industrialized countries and is expected to exhibit substantial growth in the twenty-first century. In this chapter, the concept of virgin and waste biomass as an alternative source of supply for energy and fuels is examined and the potential of biomass energy and its market penetration are evaluated.