Biomass heating systems burn organic matter—such as wood chips, agricultural residues or even municipal waste—to generate heat for buildings, whole communities, or industrial processes. More sophisticated than conventional woodstoves, they are highly efficient heating systems, achieving near complete combustion of the biomass fuel through control of the fuel and air supply, and often incorporating automatic fuel handling systems.Biomass heating systems consist of a heating plant, a heat distribution system, and a fuel supply operation. The heating plant typically makes use of multiple heat sources, including a waste heat recovery system, a biomass combustion system, a peak load heating system, and a back-up heating system. The heat distribution system conveys hot water or steam from the heating plant to the loads that may be located within the same building as the heating plant, as in a system for a single institutional or industrial building, or, in the case of a “district heating” system, clusters of buildings located in the vicinity of the heating plant.

Biomass fuels include a wide range of materials (e.g. wood residues, agricultural residues, municipal solid waste, etc.) that vary in their quality and consistency far more than liquid fossil fuels. Because of this, the fuel supply operation for a biomass plant takes on a scale and importance beyond that required for most fossil fuels and it can be considered a “component” of the biomass heating system.

Biomass heating systems have higher capital costs than conventional boilers and need diligent operators. Balancing this, they can supply large quantities of heat.