04/01/2025

Background report provides data and facts for the national biomass strategy

How much wood will be available for building, heating or manufacturing wood products in the future? How much agricultural land will be used to grow food and animal feed? How much livestock will be acceptable in the future in the context of climate targets? What role do waste and residual materials play as suppliers of energy and raw materials?

These and other questions are answered in a recent background report compiled by the six research institutes Öko-Institut, the German Biomass Research Centre, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, ifeu - Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and the Thünen Institutes for Market Analysis and Forestry. The report summarises key data, results and considerations on the potential of biomass and its uses in a compact format. 

Biomass utilisation - today and in the future

In order to achieve Germany's sustainability goals in the areas of climate protection, biodiversity, peatland protection and land use, current biomass utilisation must be shifted or reduced in many areas. Wood, for example, will only be available as an energy source to a limited extent.

Instead, the raw material will be increasingly used for construction and the manufacture of durable products. In order to reduce greenhouse gases in agriculture, livestock numbers should be reduced and peatlands used for agriculture should be rewetted. 

More organic farming and less fertiliser, including in conventional agriculture, are necessary to protect biodiversity, but lead to lower yields and therefore increasing land requirements. In order to respond to these trends and secure food supplies, more plant-based foodstuffs should be grown instead of animal feed.

The report serves as a scientific background document on these complex topics in order to support the design of political processes for biomass utilisation. 

Land use, wood stock, agriculture: data on the status quo

The background paper presents the status quo of biomass production and utilisation in Germany. The country's land area of around 36 million hectares (ha) consists of around 35 per cent arable land, 18 per cent grassland, 31 per cent forest, two per cent wetlands and water bodies and 13 per cent settlement and transport areas. On average over the last 20 years, the settlement area has increased by 83 hectares and the forest area by 76 hectares per day, while agricultural land has decreased by 116 hectares per day.

The forest in Germany is 52 per cent state-owned and 48 per cent privately owned. Coniferous and deciduous trees are equally represented in the state forest, while in the private forest 60 per cent are conifers and 40 per cent are deciduous trees. Conifers are dominated by spruce and pine; larch, fir and Douglas fir account for a much smaller proportion of the area. Deciduous trees are dominated by beech and oak.

In the last ten years, around 66 to 82 million cubic metres (million m³) of wood were removed from the forest each year. Four times as much softwood was harvested as hardwood. In addition, there are around 45 million cubic metres of sawmill by-products, waste wood and other residual materials. In 2020, 53 per cent of the wood was used as material and 47 per cent as energy. Softwood and wood residues were predominantly used for the manufacture of wood products and in the construction sector, while hardwood was only used to a lesser extent. Waste wood, industrial wood and residual wood from the maintenance of forests and other woody plants as well as large quantities of forest wood are primarily used to generate energy. In 2020, around nine million cubic metres of hardwood and around seven million cubic metres of softwood were burned, mainly by private households.

In 2021, almost 60 per cent of agricultural land was used for the cultivation of animal feed and 21 per cent for the cultivation of plant-based foodstuffs. The proportion of land used for animal feed is so high because around five to ten calories of feed are needed to produce one calorie of milk or meat. In addition, 13 per cent was used for the cultivation of energy crops, two per cent for industrial crops and five per cent for other uses. Of the agricultural land, 11 per cent was cultivated in accordance with organic farming standards.

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Kurzbericht „Hintergrundinformationen zum Status Quo der Land- und Forstwirtschaft in Deutschland und zukünftigen Biomassepotenzial für die Erarbeitung der NABIS“  (Öko-Institut, Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum, Helmholz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung, ifeu – Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung, Thünen-Institut für Marktanalyse und Thünen-Institut für Waldwirtschaft.)

Weitere Hintergrundinformationen finden sich im Abschlussbericht des Projekts BIOSTRAT.