Hoping to support sustainability, countries have established policies to foster the bioeconomy (BE), based on the use of biomass and knowledge on biological principles. However, appropriate monitoring is still lacking. We estimate global key environmental footprints (FPs) of the German BE in a historic analysis from 2000–2015 and in projection until 2030. Overall, the agricultural biomass FP is dominated by animal-based food consumption, which is slightly decreasing. The forestry biomass FP of consumption could potentially shift from net import to total supply from domestic territory. Agricultural land use for consumption is triple that of domestic agricultural land (which covers half of Germany) and induced substantial land use change in other regions from 2000–2015. The FP of irrigation water withdrawals has decreased over 2000–2015 and might continue to decline in absolute terms by 2030, but the share of supply regions with water stress might increase. The climate FP of BE contributes 18–20% to the total climate FP of domestic consumption, while employment makes up 10% and value added only 8% of the total German economy. These findings imply that sufficient monitoring of the BE needs to consider both production and consumption perspectives, as well as global FPs of national economies.

为了支持可持续性，各国制定了政策以促进生物经济 (BE)，基于生物量的使用和生物原理知识。然而，仍然缺乏适当的监测。我们在 2000-2015 年的历史分析和到 2030 年的预测中估计了德国 BE 的全球关键环境足迹 (FPs)。总体而言，农业生物量 FP 以动物性食品消费为主，略有下降。消费的林业生物量 FP 可能会从净进口转移到国内领土的总供应。用于消费的农业用地是国内农业用地（占德国的一半）的三倍，并在 2000 年至 2015 年期间引发了其他地区的重大土地用途变化。灌溉取水的 FP 在 2000-2015 年期间有所下降，到 2030 年绝对值可能会继续下降，但供水紧张地区的比例可能会增加。BE 的气候 FP 占国内消费总气候 FP 的 18-20%，而就业占德国经济总量的 10%，增加值仅占德国经济总量的 8%。这些发现意味着对 BE 的充分监测需要考虑生产和消费的观点，以及国家经济的全球 FP。