Biomass offers America tremendous opportunity to use domestic and sustainable resources to provide its fuel, power, and chemical needs from plants and plant-derived materials. The Department of Energy’s Renewable Energy Biomass Program, run by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy includes major programs for developing and improving technology for biomass power; for making biofuels such as ethanol (from biomass residues as well as grain) and renewable diesel; and for making plastics and chemicals from renewable, biobased materials.

Bioenergy technologies use renewable biomass resources to produce an array of energy related products including electricity, liquid, solid, and gaseous fuels, heat, chemicals, and other materials. Bioenergy ranks second (to hydropower) in renewable U.S. primary energy production and accounts for three percent of the primary energy production in the United States.

The term "biomass" means any plant derived organic matter available on a renewable basis, including dedicated energy crops and trees, agricultural food and feed crops, agricultural crop wastes and residues, wood wastes and residues, aquatic plants, animal wastes, municipal wastes, and other waste materials.