Which countries produce the most biofuels?

Biofuels — liquid fuels made from everything from algae to corn — haven’t yet come anywhere close to replacing crude oil. But they’re being produced in increasingly large volumes around the globe.

(Biomass is also used to produce electricity; we’ll have more details on biomass energy following our latest survey, which is still open for responses.)

In 2010, the world produced 59,261,000 tons of oil equivalent in biofuels, a 13.8-percent increase over 2009, according to BP’s 2011 Statistical Review of World Energy. Just under 43 percent of that — 25,351,000 tons of oil equivalent — was produced in the US, where most biofuel is ethanol made from corn. (In 2011, for the first time, more US-grown corn went toward fuel rather than food. Europe and Asia, by contrast, produce more biodiesel from a variety of sources, including crops like rapeseed.)

The world’s top 10 biofuel producers in 2010 were:

1. US – 25,351,000 tons of oil equivalent (toe)
2. Brazil – 15,573,000 toe
3. Germany – 2,930,000 toe
4. France – 2,312,000 toe
5. Argentina – 1,687,000 toe
6. China – 1,399,000 toe
7. Spain – 1,179,000 toe
8. Canada – 996,000 toe
9. Italy – 670,000 toe
10. Thailand – 647,000 toe