Biofuels & bioenergy

Drop-in fuels from waste oils, crops and residues — a stack from feedstock to certified SAF, renewable diesel and grid-injection biomethane.

Industrial-scale anaerobic digestion of municipal solid waste (MSW) to produce renewable natural gas (RNG), drastically reducing methane emissions from landfills while providing baseload decarbonized energy for heavy transport and grids.

A thin category — plant-derived phase-change materials that absorb and release thermal energy at a defined temperature, replacing paraffin/petroleum-based PCM chemistry — three confirmed vendors spanning thermal energy storage, textile thermoregulation, and building applications.

Enzyme- and microbial-derived fuel additives that break down carbon deposits, gum and varnish in internal-combustion engines by improving fuel combustion chemistry rather than through the synthetic detergent (polyetheramine) chemistry that dominates the mainstream fuel-additive market, sold by specialty producers (Star Brite, XBEE, Enzyme Energy, BIO POWER) into both retail consumer bottles and B2B marine/bunker-fuel dosing programs.

A genuinely single-vendor category, distinct from the microbial fuel cell power already covered on this site — paper-based enzymatic biofuel cells that generate power from glucose or body fluids for wearable, implantable, and disposable IoT sensors — with one confirmed producer as of 2026.

Microbial anaerobic digestion of farm residues, energy crops and food waste into biogas, upgraded to grid-injectable biomethane (RNG) — a regional biogas industry distinct from MSW-focused digestion.

Combusting solid biomass to generate dispatchable baseload electricity and industrial heat.

Rewiring natural photosynthesis — enhanced-photosynthesis trees, C4 rice, and new-to-nature CO2-fixation cycles — alongside artificial chloroplasts and bionic leaves that turn sunlight and CO2 into biomass, fuels and biofertilizer.

Acetogenic bacteria fix steel-mill and refinery off-gas (CO, CO2, H2) into recycled-carbon ethanol, acetone and sustainable aviation fuel through the Wood–Ljungdahl pathway — operated at commercial scale by LanzaTech licensees (the 210,000 t/yr Shougang plant, the €200M Steelanol plant at Ghent, and LanzaJet's Freedom Pines alcohol-to-jet facility) and extended to non-steel CO2 feedstocks by Cemvita's engineered-microbe platform.

Municipal solid waste, forestry residue and captured biogas are gasified into syngas and built up into jet-range hydrocarbons via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis — a thermochemical pathway distinct from the HEFA and alcohol-to-jet routes that dominate today's certified SAF supply, with 2026 commercial-stage projects in the UK, South Africa-licensed technology and a first US biogas-to-jet pilot.

Thermochemical and biological routes that convert biomass and biomethane into hydrogen — gasification followed by water-gas shift and PSA, bio-SMR of biomethane, and dark-fermentation R&D — anchored by gasification licensors, solid-oxide reformers and energy majors.

A genuinely thin, oligopolistic category — injecting engineered microbial consortia into oil reservoirs to increase recoverable volumes — where two US firms are the commercially dominant players; most of the rest of the field's activity sits inside national oil company in-house reservoir microbiology programs rather than a vendor market.

Electrogenic bacteria oxidize organic matter at an anode and hand off electrons to an external circuit, turning wastewater, soil or plant root exudate directly into low-grade DC electricity — a technology direction opposite to microbial electrosynthesis, generating power from waste rather than consuming it to make chemicals.

Microbial electrosynthesis and power-to-methane: renewable electricity and CO2 fed to electroactive microbes at a cathode that fix CO2 via the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway into acetate, alcohols, biomethane and single-cell protein.

Bio-methanol and bio-LNG for shipping decarbonization — biomass-gasification methanol and anaerobic-digestion liquefied biomethane burned in dual-fuel marine engines, cutting well-to-wake CO2 by 60-95% under IMO and FuelEU Maritime regulation.