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 Center, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, ifeu - Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and the Thünen Institutes for Market Analysis and Forestry. The report summarizes key data, results and considerations on the potential of biomass and its uses in a compact form.
In order to achieve Germany's sustainability goals in the areas of climate protection, biodiversity, peatland protection and land use, the current use of biomass 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 used increasingly 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 fertilizer in conventional agriculture are also necessary to protect biodiversity, but lead to lower yields and thus 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 use.
Land use, wood stock, agriculture: data on the status quo
The background paper presents the status quo of biomass production and use in Germany. The country's land area of around 36 million hectares (ha) consists of around 35 percent arable land, 18 percent grassland, 31 percent forest, two percent wetlands and water bodies and 13 percent settlement and transportation areas. On average over the past 20 years, the settlement area has increased by 83 ha and the forest area by 76 ha per day, while agricultural land has decreased by 116 ha per day.
52 percent of Germany's forests are state-owned and 48 percent are privately owned. Coniferous and deciduous trees are equally represented in the state forest, in the private forest 60 percent coniferous and 40 percent 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.
Over the past ten years, around 66 to 82 million cubic meters (million m³) of wood have been removed from the forest each year. Four times as much softwood was harvested as hardwood. In addition, there are around 45 million m³ of sawmill by-products, waste wood and other residual materials. In 2020, 53% of the wood was used for material purposes and 47% for 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 landscape conservation as well as large quantities of forest wood are mainly used to generate energy. In 2020, around nine million m³ of hardwood and around seven million m³ of softwood were burned, mainly by private households.
In 2021, almost 60 percent of agricultural land was used for the cultivation of animal feed and 21 percent 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 percent was used for the cultivation of energy crops, two percent for industrial crops and five percent for other uses. Of the agricultural land, 11 percent was cultivated in accordance with organic farming standards.
