The world is waking up to a hard truth: electrification alone won’t decarbonize everything. While EVs and solar panels dominate headlines, huge swaths of the economy—aviation, long-haul freight, industrial heat, and agriculture—still run on dense, combustible molecules. For these sectors, there is no lithium-ion equivalent. That’s where biomass energy, or bioenergy, comes in. By converting waste—from used cooking oil and corn stalks to cow manure and landfill gas—into low- or even carbon-negative fuels, companies in this space are tackling the “last mile” of decarbonization. What was once a climate side bet has become a policy and procurement priority. Across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, new regulations now mandate real volumes of bio-based fuel and offer per-gallon incentives that lock in long-term price advantages. In this report, we highlight the top biomass energy stocks to watch in 2025—set to benefit from new demand drivers and emerging bioenergy technologies.
Why Biomass Energy, Why Now?
Bioenergy’s moment has arrived because both regulators and heavy-energy industries have run out of easy decarbonisation options. Aviation is the clearest example: the UK has hard-wired a 2 percent sustainable-aviation-fuel (SAF) blending mandate for 2025 that ramps to 10 percent by 2030. Meanwhile, Singapore begins a 1 percent obligation on every departing flight in 2026 and is already signalling a tripling of that share by the decade’s end. In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act’s new §45Z “clean-fuel” credit will pay producers up to $1.75 per gallon of SAF, on top of existing state Low-Carbon-Fuel-Standard incentives. These policies turn low-carbon molecules from a niche option into a compliance product—effectively guaranteeing demand growth for any fuel, chemical, or power pathway that can document a shrinking carbon score.
To understand the bioenergy technology wave now scaling to meet that demand, think of three core building blocks:
- Sustainable aviation fuel is a drop-in jet fuel made by hydrotreating waste oils, alcohols, or captured-carbon gases. Once blended with conventional kerosene it meets the same ASTM spec and can be pumped straight into today’s aircraft. This biochemical sleight-of-hand explains why SAF output is expected to double in 2025, yet still meets barely 1 percent of global jet demand.
- Renewable natural gas (RNG) is biogas from anaerobic digestion—bugs eating manure, food waste or landfill gas—cleaned to pipeline grade. The U.S. already counts nearly 2,500 operational biogas sites, and dairy-manure digesters alone have quadrupled since 2018.
- Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) closes the loop by burning biomass for heat or power, capturing the biogenic CO₂ and locking it underground. This ends up producing energy with net-negative emissions—one of the few scalable, verifiable carbon-removal tools on policymakers’ radar.
In short, these technologies turn waste or atmospheric carbon into fungible energy molecules, and they are now proven enough that policy is pulling them into the mainstream. This report features biomass energy stocks leveraging each of these technologies.
Advanced Biofuel & RNG Producers
This group of biomass energy stocks makes the fuels we already use—just without the fossil carbon. Their products include sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), renewable diesel, and renewable natural gas (RNG)—all chemically similar to their petroleum counterparts but derived from waste oils, crop residues, or biogas. The big unlock is that these fuels are “drop-in”—they can flow through today’s engines, pipelines, and supply chains without modification. This makes them the most scalable decarbonization tools for hard-to-abate sectors.
Neste (OTCMKTS: NTOIY)
HQ: Finland; Largest SAF/diesel maker using patented NEXBTL process.
Neste, a pure-play biomass energy stock, is the largest producer of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel in the world. It refines waste fats, used cooking oils, and other non-food feedstocks into “drop-in” hydrocarbon fuels that are chemically equivalent to petroleum diesel or jet fuel. This scale is built on Neste’s proprietary NEXBTL technology platform: a patented hydrotreating process that can convert a wide variety of renewable oils into ultra-clean fuels. Neste’s massive refinery operations (including facilities in Rotterdam and Singapore) and broad global supply chain allow it to absorb global renewable feedstocks and produce millions of gallons of renewable diesel and SAF each year.
Neste’s investment edge is this unmatched technology and scale. Its NEXBTL process has been refined over decades (with patents dating back 25 years) to handle diverse oils and achieve very high efficiency. Because of this, Neste’s renewables have superior carbon efficiency: for example, its renewable diesel and SAF reduce greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 50–80% compared to fossil fuels, depending on feedstock. In addition, Neste’s fuel is fully drop-in, so it benefits from existing fuel infrastructure. Few competitors can match Neste’s combination of production capacity, product quality, and feedstock flexibility. In short, Neste’s vast experience and integrated technology platform, along with long-term offtake agreements and sustainability commitments, give it a durable moat in supplying the growing global market for low-carbon fuels.
Gevo (NASDAQ: GEVO)
HQ: USA; SAF and RNG producer with proprietary ethanol-to-olefins tech.
Gevo is a Colorado-based renewable fuels company that transforms biological feedstocks into low-carbon fuels and chemicals. It operates facilities including one of the largest dairy waste-to-RNG plants in the U.S. and the world’s first commercial alcohol-to-jet fuel plant. Its mission is “to convert renewable energy and biogenic carbon into sustainable fuels and chemicals with a net-zero or better carbon footprint.” Gevo produces sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), renewable gasoline/diesel substitutes, and biochemicals, positioning it as a vertically integrated player in the circular carbon economy.
Gevo’s advantage lies in its proprietary ethanol-to-olefins (ETO) technology. Traditional processes ferment ethanol and then crack it into ethylene (a C2 olefin) before building larger molecules, but Gevo’s patented ETO process directly converts ethanol into valuable C3 and C4 olefins (like propylene and butenes) in one step. This innovation dramatically simplifies production, reducing energy use and capital cost for making jet fuel and plastics precursors. With LG Chem as a partner to commercialize the tech, Gevo aims to lower the cost of bio-based jet fuel and chemicals. This unique ETO platform – combined with its existing SAF and RNG operations – gives Gevo a potential long-term moat, enabling it to turn plant-based ethanol into a broader slate of drop-in fuels and high-margin chemicals more efficiently. As demand grows for low-carbon fuels and materials, Gevo’s patented approach could drive competitive advantage in a sector where few companies have comparable IP.
Aemetis (NASDAQ: AMTX)
HQ: USA; Biofuels firm with carbon-negative fuel platform using CCS.
Aemetis is a California-based renewable fuels and biochemical company focused on transforming waste carbon streams into low- and negative-carbon products. It operates a 65 MGY ethanol plant in California and a 50 MGY biodiesel facility in India, and is building out dairy biogas digesters in the Central Valley to produce renewable natural gas. Aemetis is now pursuing a major “Carbon Zero” biorefinery project at Riverbank, CA, aimed at producing 90 MGY of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel using waste feedstocks. The company has already secured multi-billion-dollar offtake contracts (roughly $3.8 billion for SAF and $3.2 billion for renewable diesel) underpinning the plant’s economics, and its strategy is tightly aligned with California’s low-carbon fuel mandates.
Aemetis’ edge lies in its integrated carbon-negative fuel platform. Under the Carbon Zero program, Aemetis plans to use waste corn oil and other renewable oils as feedstocks, and produce hydrogen from waste and forest wood to make jet and diesel fuel. Importantly, it incorporates carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to achieve truly negative carbon intensity. In effect, as Aemetis burns biomass-derived hydrogen to make fuels, the CO₂ absorbed during the growth of that biomass can be captured and stored, making the end product carbon-negative. This end-to-end approach – from waste and byproduct feedstocks through cellulosic hydrogen to CCS – is highly unusual and could give Aemetis a strategic edge. Few competitors match its depth of technology (patents and licenses in biofuels and biochemicals) or its scale of projects spanning RNG, ethanol, biodiesel, SAF and carbon capture.
Calumet (NASDAQ: CLMT)
HQ: USA; SAF refiner with low-cost catalyst-driven yield expansion.
Calumet is a Minnesota-based refining and specialty chemicals company. Through its Montana Renewables subsidiary, Calumet operates a renewable diesel facility in Great Falls, Montana and has pivoted it toward producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The company recently announced it will accelerate SAF capacity expansion by tapping a technology-driven approach. Instead of a large new build, Calumet has enhanced existing units and catalysts to quickly boost SAF output. In mid-2025 it secured approval to reach 120–150 MGY SAF capacity by early 2026, at a tiny fraction of the originally planned cost. A $1.44 billion DOE loan guarantee backs the longer-term “MaxSAF” project aiming for 300 MGY by 2028. This turnaround underscores how Calumet is evolving from traditional refining into a clean fuels player.
Calumet’s strategy is engineering-driven, low-cost SAF expansion. By aggressively upgrading catalysts and repurposing equipment, Calumet has achieved a four-fold increase in jet fuel output (from ~2,000 to ~10,000 barrels per day) without massive capital spending. This means it can ramp SAF sales and earnings rapidly using its existing Montana biorefinery. In effect, Calumet turned a planned $150–250 million project into one costing only $20–30 million, thanks to in-house innovation. Such adaptability is a key moat: it implies Calumet can profitably turn vegetable oils into jet fuel faster and cheaper than many competitors. Combined with its federal backing and the profitability improvement seen in recent quarters, this technical agility and yield-maximizing strategy make Calumet a compelling pick in the biofuels sector.
Biorefining & Carbon-Negative Solutions
Whereas conventional biofuel plants make one or two outputs, usually ethanol or biodiesel, biorefineries take a whole-plant, whole-carbon approach. These companies use advanced chemical and thermal processing to turn biomass into a diverse suite of fuels, chemicals, and materials, often while capturing or permanently storing the CO₂. These include some of the frontier of biomass energy stocks: platforms that turn low-value feedstocks like wood chips or corn husks into high-value outputs like carbon-negative electricity, bioplastics precursors, or carbon-removal credits.
Origin Materials (NASDAQ: ORGN)
HQ: USA; Makes carbon-negative plastics from wood waste.
Origin Materials is a U.S. technology company developing carbon-negative building blocks from wood waste. Its platform processes non-food biomass such as wood chips, agricultural residues, or even cardboard into furanic chemicals (like chloromethyl furfural and hydrothermal carbon) that can replace petroleum-derived feedstocks. Origin then sells these intermediates to make products like PET plastic, fibers, resins, and adhesives, but with a crucial difference: carbon from the biomass is locked into the products, effectively capturing it from the atmosphere. For example, Origin has jointly built a commercial plant to produce polyethylene furanoate (PEF) precursors as a 100% bio-based PET alternative.
Origin’s key edge is its carbon-negative process. Because it uses woody biomass (whose carbon was recently in the air) to make materials, Origin claims its products have a net-negative carbon footprint. Origin’s technology also underpins a more circular economy: by making virgin plastics and fibers out of waste biomass, it addresses plastic pollution and waste management issues. The moat here is technical leadership: Origin has spent years optimizing catalytic and thermal processes to yield drop-in chemicals at scale, and it has demonstrated commercial viability (including partnerships with major packaging firms). Thus, Origin could make high-volume chemicals at similar cost to fossil routes, but with the extra benefit of carbon removal built in.
Avantium N.V. (OTCMKTS: AVTXD)
HQ: Netherlands; First mover in bio-based PEF via YXY tech.
Avantium is a Dutch renewable chemicals firm pioneering a plant-based plastics platform. Its flagship technology (YXY) converts sugars (from corn or other biomass) into FDCA, the monomer for polyethylene furanoate (PEF) – a next-generation polyester. Avantium calls its PEF polymer Releaf®. PEF made from 100% renewable carbon has superior performance to conventional PET: it blocks oxygen about ten times better and carbon dioxide six to ten times better, extending shelf life for foods and drinks. Releaf® is also fully recyclable and has a much smaller carbon footprint than fossil PET or even other bio-plastics.
What makes Avantium compelling is that it is the first mover commercializing FDCA/PEF. It has successfully demonstrated YXY at pilot scale and in 2025 is bringing up the world’s first FDCA flagship plant (5 kt/yr) in Delfzijl, Netherlands. Through this, Avantium will start selling Releaf® to major brands (it already has customers lined up) and will license its technology for much larger plants. If successful, Avantium stands to capture the “sleeping giant” of bio-polymers. Its technology has unlocked a once-elusive pathway to high-performance 100% bioplastics, and brand owners are beginning to adopt PEF for sustainable packaging. Because few companies have the necessary know-how or patents (YXY is complex chemistry), Avantium enjoys a strong technological moat. Its growing product portfolio (bottles, fibers, films) and partnerships (such as with beverage and dairy firms) position it to be a leader in the emerging market for high-performance bioplastics.
Drax Group plc (OTCMKTS: DRXGY)
HQ: UK; Biomass power leader building BECCS for carbon removals.
Drax Group is a UK power generator that has transformed its 3.9 GW power station from coal to sustainable biomass pellets (wood). Today Drax’s biomass plant provides about 6% of UK electricity. Crucially, Drax has committed to becoming carbon-negative by 2030, and it is now building the world’s first bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) system at scale. Its new U.S. subsidiary Elimini is planning dozens of BECCS plants on converted biomass facilities, starting with a project in Texas by 2030. These BECCS installations will capture the CO₂ released when burning wood and permanently store it underground, while the wood itself absorbed CO₂ as it grew, making the process carbon-negative. Drax has already locked in carbon removal agreements, and it plans to sell removal credits along with electricity to corporate buyers.
By combining sustainably sourced biomass with carbon capture, Drax can generate electricity while actually taking carbon out of the atmosphere. This is a rare attribute among energy companies. As climate targets tighten, genuine carbon-negative power is expected to be in huge demand. The UK’s Climate Change Committee has noted that one Drax BECCS unit could deliver 40% of the carbon removals needed by 2050. Drax’s early commitment and expertise give it a crucial head start, as few competitors have demonstrated commercial BECCS yet. This provides a strategic moat: any company aiming to cut net emissions will likely pay a premium for Drax’s removal credits, supporting long-term cash flows as carbon-pricing and offset markets develop.
Green Plains Inc. (NASDAQ: GPRE)
HQ: USA; Ethanol refiner integrating CCS for low-carbon fuels.
Green Plains is a U.S. bio-refining company best known as a major corn-ethanol producer. It operates about a dozen ethanol plants, along with feed and ingredient facilities. Green Plains has pivoted toward low-carbon fuels: its “Advantage Nebraska” strategy equips its Nebraska ethanol plants with carbon capture technology. In 2024–2025 it began construction on compressors and laterals to sequester about 800,000 tons of CO₂ per year from its Central City, Wood River and York plants. This captured biogenic CO₂ will be permanently stored underground, making the ethanol produced nearly carbon-negative. Green Plains is also developing a novel sugar extraction process (Clean Sugar Technology™) to produce low-carbon dextrose, and it markets a line of low-carbon ethanol as a premium fuel.
Green Plain is an early-mover in carbon-capture integration. By retrofitting existing ethanol plants for CCS, Green Plains can claim “clean” or even “negative-emissions” ethanol, which can fetch higher prices or credits. Its recent press releases emphasize this shift toward “low-carbon, high-value biofuels”. No other large U.S. ethanol producer has as far advanced in commercial-scale CCS. In practical terms, Green Plains will be one of the first companies able to offer virtually carbon-neutral ethanol at scale. This technological leadership in bio-CCS – combined with its existing farming and ethanol expertise – could create a durable moat. As fuel standards and carbon markets evolve, Green Plains stands to benefit from selling compliance credits or premium “offset” fuels, improving margins relative to traditional ethanol makers.
Bioeconomy Tech Enablers
These biomass energy stocks represent the infrastructure and IP layers behind the bioenergy economy. They don’t sell fuel themselves. Instead, they license or deploy the core technologies—like microbial fermentation of industrial off-gases, or modular gasifiers that convert mixed waste into syngas—that let others turn waste carbon into valuable products. Their business model earns them a slice of every ton processed, making them essential yet asset-light beneficiaries of the bioeconomy buildout.
LanzaTech Global Inc. (NASDAQ: LNZA)
HQ: USA; Converts waste gases to fuels via gas fermentation.
LanzaTech is a Chicago-headquartered biotech company that pioneered “gas fermentation” for carbon recycling. Its core technology uses proprietary microbes to ferment carbon-rich gases (such as carbon monoxide and CO₂ from industrial emissions) into fuels and chemicals. In practice, LanzaTech has operated plants that take steel mill off-gases or other waste streams and turn them into ethanol as a primary product. Recently, LanzaTech has expanded this platform into new products: for example, it now produces a single-cell protein (LanzaTech Nutritional Protein) using its bacteria and is partnering with the U.S. Department of Defense on deployable protein reactors. This exemplifies LanzaTech’s model of turning ‘liability’ carbon into valuable inputs for fuel, food, or materials.
The case for LanzaTech hinges on its unique gas-fermentation IP and first-mover status. Its anaerobic bioreactors can handle a wide range of waste gas compositions, a capability very few companies offer at scale. Because the microbes digest the carbon gases directly, the process bypasses the need for crops or fermentation sugars, giving LanzaTech a potential cost and land-use advantage. LanzaTech’s extensive patent portfolio (including on gas-to-ethanol and gas-to-protein processes) and its now-proven commercial installations create a strong barrier to entry. Moreover, its demonstrated flexibility – e.g. switching from ethanol as primary output to high-value protein – shows the platform’s adaptability. As industries look to decarbonize emissions, LanzaTech stands out by literally “recycling” carbon into something sellable.
Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA)
HQ: USA; Synthetic biology platform engineering custom microbes.
Ginkgo Bioworks is a Boston-based “Organism Company” whose automated foundries let customers “program cells as easily as we program computers.” Rather than commercializing a single product, Ginkgo sells access to high-throughput robotic labs that design and optimize microbes for partners across fuels, chemicals, and agriculture. Its relevance to biomass energy is clear: in 2023 the company teamed with Visolis to engineer strains that convert renewable feedstocks into bio-isoprene and high-energy sustainable-aviation-fuel molecules, illustrating how Ginkgo functions as a pick-and-shovel supplier for low-carbon fuels.
Ginkgo’s goal is platform economics, aiming to be an “Amazon Web Services for biotech.” Every program that runs through the foundry adds DNA parts, performance data, and machine-learning insights that make the next job cheaper and faster. This compounding data advantage, protected by extensive IP and billions in sunk automation costs, creates a moat few rivals can cross. Because Ginkgo is typically paid in milestone fees, royalties, or equity stakes, shareholders gain leveraged exposure to a diversified pipeline of CO₂-to-chemicals, SAF, and carbon-negative materials without financing individual plants. If synthetic biology becomes the default route to decarbonized molecules, Ginkgo’s horizontal, data-rich platform is positioned to capture a toll on much of that value flow.