Abstract: Because of the diminishing fossil fuel reserves and increased CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere due to their burning, biofuels have been looked as an alternative for sustainability and protecting the environment. Use of plant byproducts such as lignocellulosic material as feedstock would be a viable strategy avoiding the use of food (sugar) for bioethanol production. Lignocelluloses are the most abundant resource in soil, its susceptibility to enzymatic digestion favor the release of simple sugars which could be fermented to produce ethanol. The cellulolytic enzymes that hydrolyze cellulosic feedstocks economically are critical to develop the biofuel energy sector. Numerous highly effective pathways for degrading biomass have evolved but enzymes for effective digestion of biomass have been characterized only from few culturable organisms. These biomass-degrading organisms are ill suited for genetic engineering or industrial applications while conventional methods for identifying and cloning their individual enzymes are inefficient. The discipline of metagenomics as the culture independent genomic analysis of entire microorganisms in a particular environmental niche was evolved as an effort to discover novel microbial enzymes to improve biomass utilization. This review, focus on metagenomics as a promising approach for biofuel research and its application in the NGS era.