Role of biofuels in the renewable energy sector

Biofuels are energy carriers made from biomass; they can be used for heating and cooling, power generation, and transportation. Biofuels can also be solid, liquid, or gaseous. Nowadays, they seemed to be a significant strategic alternative for diversifying the global energy matrix. However, there is still a lot of ambiguity surrounding the use of biofuels as a sustainable energy source, given that the scientific community is still unsure of the potential long-term environmental implications that biofuels may have. Sources used for the study include academic articles, papers, reports, and statistics from many nations. This paper aims to provide an overview of the many forms of biofuels, highlighting their contribution to sustainability as well as their primary benefits, drawbacks, and uncertainties. Among the main findings are: the demand for biofuels is still highly dependent on the different types of policies implemented by the governments that help encourage the use of biofuels, and the participation of biofuels in the renewable fuels market shows a moderately increasing trend in the period 2011-2021.