Biomass and biofuel stores: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Biomass and biofuel stores, such as wood pellets, ethanol and biodiesel stocks, are valued at market fuel prices. Ethanol follows maize and sugar costs, blending mandates and petrol prices, including under India's ethanol blending programme.
Proxy US PPI: ethanol index · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for biomass and biofuel stores itself, so this tab uses the closest public series as a stand-in. Read the numbers as an indication, not as the price of this exact item.
What its price moves with
Selected linkBiomass and biofuel stores and Maize
Monthly changes 0.26 weak correlation 12-month changes 0.70 moderate correlation Last 5 years 0.20 monthly changes Lead or lag none No clear lead or lag Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Biomass and biofuel stores ≈ 16.5 × (Maize)0.51 R² 0.47 On this fit, a 10% higher maize price goes with a 4.9% higher biomass and biofuel stores price over the long run. Units: index and $/mt.Chart: Biomass and biofuel stores and Maize prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Biomass and biofuel stores price against Maize price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2006), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.US ethanol is made mostly from maize, which is the largest production cost. The ethanol index correlates at 0.26 for monthly moves and 0.70 for yearly moves, as distillers pass grain costs on.
weak co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsBrazil and India make ethanol from cane juice and molasses, and mills switch between sugar and ethanol as prices change. The world sugar price correlates with US ethanol at 0.16 for monthly moves and 0.33 for yearly moves.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsEthanol is blended into petrol, so oil prices affect its demand and value. The link is weak monthly, at 0.21, and moderate yearly, at 0.51, because blending mandates set much of the demand regardless of price.
weak co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsBiodiesel stocks are the other main liquid biofuel store. The soybean oil proxy correlates with ethanol at 0.26 for monthly moves and 0.57 for yearly moves, as both respond to farm and fuel markets.
weak co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsWood chips and pellets are the main solid biomass stores for power plants and heating. The wood chips proxy shows almost no monthly link to ethanol, at -0.06, since solid and liquid biofuels serve different markets.
little or none co-movement month to month · 178 months Show chartsEthanol stocks are a major part of biofuel storage, so the tile uses the same US ethanol index as the bioethanol tile. The two series are identical, so no separate statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.