Nearly 900 billion cubic metres of biogas and biomethane could be produced sustainably each year from existing organic waste streams — enough to meet more than 20% of current global natural gas demand — according to a first-of-its-kind global spatial analysis from the International Energy Agency.
More than 70% of that sustainable potential lies in emerging and developing economies, led by India and Brazil, alongside China. To accompany the analysis, the agency has launched an interactive online map allowing policymakers, investors and industry stakeholders to explore the findings down to national and local level.
The tool draws on the IEA's Biogases Geospatial Resource Assessment Model (BioGRAM), which produces country- and location-specific supply cost curves for more than 40 feedstock types, grouped into crop residues, animal manure and biowaste. The model identifies prospective anaerobic digester sites close to feedstock sources, accounting for existing infrastructure such as gas pipelines and roads, and includes only feedstocks that avoid competition with food and feed production. Users can define a specific area and generate estimates of biogas potential by feedstock, together with development costs.
Global production of biogases currently stands at around 1.7 EJ, and the IEA describes quadrupling waste-derived output to nearly 6 EJ by 2035 — in line with the COP30 Belém pledge on sustainable fuels — as ambitious but achievable. Doing so would deliver around 0.5 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent in annual emissions savings, through the double dividend of capturing methane that would otherwise escape from agriculture and waste, while displacing fossil fuels.
The agency notes the economic case is already visible in the EU, the world's largest producer, where combined output of nearly 20 billion cubic metres of natural gas equivalent in 2025 avoided around $6 billion of conventional fuel imports.
The analysis is candid on the sector's constraints: production costs remain relatively high, permitting is complex, and policy support insufficient in many markets. The IEA also cautions that methane leaks along the value chain can significantly erode — or even eliminate — the emissions benefits, making improved measurement and robust carbon accounting essential.
BioGRAM has already underpinned country assessments in the IEA's India Bioenergy Market Report 2026 and Southeast Asia Energy Outlook 2026, as well as analysis of prospects in Ukraine, and the agency says it will continue updating the model with new data.
IEA maps 900 billion cubic metres of global biogas potential with new tool
