The following figures give an idea of the current dimension of fuel demand and supply from bio-based resources:

In 2019, nearly 418 Exajoules (EJ) of final energy were consumed worldwide (IEA 2021). This is roughly equivalent to the amount of energy produced annually by 10,000 typical nuclear power plants or the energy the sun provides to the Earth in 1 hour and 30 minutes.

The majority of this energy is generated by burning coal, oil, and natural gas. Only about 11% of the energy demand was met by bioenergy (IEA 2020). The largest proportion of bioenergy is used for cooking and heating.

In 2022, 118 EJ of energy were consumed globally in the transport sector (IEA 2023). Only about 3.5% of this demand was covered by biofuels, with 3.6 EJ of bioenergy used as liquid fuels in the transport sector. While the use of bioethanol from sugar- or starch-rich crops has stagnated in recent years, the use of biodiesel has steadily increased. The use of other vegetable oil-based fuels (e.g., hydrotreated vegetable oil, HVO) has more than doubled in recent years. Overall, the use of biofuels increased by 11% between 2018 and 2022 in volumetric terms