This report presents indicators, trends and scenarios on the state and performance of the German bioeconomy. The aim is to identify the challenges and opportunities that policy makers need to know in order to effectively steer the transition towards a circular and more sustainable bioeconomy.

Key messages include:

• The bioeconomy provides a wide range of sustainable development potential for Germany, e.g. in the field of biotechnology;
• It is crucial that the use of biomass supports economic and social development within ecological limits;
• Future measures should aim for a smarter, more efficient, sufficient and regenerative use of biomass;
• Shifting diets towards less meat and milk is a key lever for reducing environmental footprints (saving land, water and biodiversity while reducing GHG emissions);
• Monitoring of the German bioeconomy should continue to provide an overview of socio-economic and environmental performance from a systems perspective, and in the context of global sustainable development goals.

With over 40 contributing authors from more than 10 institutions, this report showcases the key results of two major research projects (SYMOBIO 2.0 and MoBi II) focused on consolidating the systemic monitoring and modelling of the German bioeconomy.

The report ‘Monitoring the German Bioeconomy: Status, performance, trends and implications for sustainable development’ and extended summaries (in English and German) can be found here.

More on the footprints of the bioeconomy and its future development

As a project partner of SYMOBIO 2.0, GWS worked in particular on calculating the ecological and socio-economic footprints and modelling future scenarios. In addition to a reference scenario, various ‘bioeconomy wedges’ were developed that describe the effects of alternative future developments on the footprints. The GWS Discussion Paper 2024/4 documents the assumptions on which these scenarios are based and presents selected results.