Bioenergy is considered among the main mitigation strategies to meet a green-growth development paradigm of 1.5 °C. However, climate change has been dramatically restructuring agriculture and damaging crops, threatening the achievement of global food security and bioenergy goals. Studies have shown that succulent plants through their water efficient and highly temperature-drought-tolerant Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM) pathway, could be a key opportunity to meet future energy demands under global change scenarios. However, specific bioenergy potentials under alternative management conditions, irrigation, and land availability that minimize resource conflicts with food production, biodiversity transgressions, or water withdrawals in water scarce regions, remain unclear. Here, we estimate under a bottom-up approach the global bioenergy potentials of four relevant CAM species on recently abandoned croplands and arid marginal lands, unravelling the interdependencies between land availability, water requirements and climatic conditions at the global scale. We identify a potential of 16-36 Ej yr