Shifting Hazards: Footprint trends of the German Bioeconomy

Abstract Hoping to support sustainability, many countries established policies to foster bioeconomy (BE). While shifting towards more biomass use bears chances and risks, appropriate monitoring is still lacking. Here we show for the first time global key environmental footprints (FPs) of the German BE. From 2000 to 2030, the agricultural biomass FP is dominated by animal-based food consumption, which is slightly declining. Forest biomass FP of consumption could be potentially supplied from domestic territory. Agricultural land use for consumption is triple of domestic agricultural land (which covers half of Germany), having induced significant land use change in other regions from 2000 to 2015. Water FP for irrigation has decreased and might decline in absolute terms, but the share of supply regions with water stress might increase until 2030. The climate FP of BE contributes 20 to 18 % to the total climate FP of domestic consumption, while employment makes up 10 % and value added only 8 % of total.