Measuring the importance of the bioeconomy in Germany: Concept and illustration

Abstract

This paper aims at measuring the importance of the bioeconomy within the economy as a whole in Germany. It is based upon the definition of the bioeconomy by the German Bioeconomy Council according to which the bioeconomy “encompasses all those sectors and their related services which produce, process or use biological resources in whatever form.” Various official statistics were exploited for the determination of the different industries and their share of the bioeconomy. Our analysis covers the developments from 2002 to 2010. The indicators used were employment and gross value added. Altogether, about five million employees, representing 10% of all employees and 140 billion Euros, representing 6% of gross national product have been identified as the share of bioeconomy in Germany in 2010. This indicates a strong increase compared to the year 2002. Challenges that still need to be overcome are that neither the available data nor the economic activities themselves can be unambiguously assigned to the bioeconomy or the non-bioeconomy.