Several biomass feedstocks were analyzed for their suitability in chemicals production by industry. Feedstocks included dedicated feedstock crops, industrial residuals, and conventional food crops. The factors that were examined included price of raw materials, degree of raw material preprocessing necessary, storage requirements, potential fermentable sugar yield, opportunities for waste minimization, level of technology base, crop hardiness, and land usage. The following conclusions were made : (1) the US has great potential for controlling the direction of a biomass-based chemicals industry because domestic supplies of raw feedstock materials are in excess of what is required for the production of many commodity chemicals, and (2) of the representative feedstocks that were analyzed, cellulosic industrial residuals and fermentable sugar-containing industrial residuals were the most promising prospects.