Measurement of the EU Bioeconomy and the Inclusion of Downstream and Upstream Linkages Mesure de la bioéconomie dans l’Union européenne et prise en compte des liens en aval et en amont Bewertung der EU-Bioökonomie und die Einbeziehung von vor- und nachgelagerten Sektoren

Abstract

The development of the bioeconomy, according to the European Commission, is a key strategy for achieving climate neutrality by 2050. The bioeconomy will feature high on the EU green policy agenda for many years to come, as evidenced by the release of the European Green Deal and the updated bioeconomy strategy 2018 (EC, 2018) and efforts to monitor the sector (EU, 2021). Therefore, we developed a technique to measure EU bioeconomy value added (VA) across countries, with a view to monitoring the progress and impact of the EU's bioeconomy strategies.

Wesseler and von Braun (2017) provide an analysis of the methodological challenges and stress the importance of expanding the bioeconomy domain beyond traditional industries. Thus, for an accurate measurement of the shares of the bioeconomy in VA, we include the relevant economic industries, categorised as fully and partly bioeconomy industry. Fully bioeconomy industries use and convert biological resources. They include for example the agriculture and food sector, the forestry sector and the pulp and paper sector. They provide inputs to other industries that further process those inputs (downstream). Those are considered partly bioeconomy industries as they also use inputs from other industries. Further, industries that provide inputs to the fully bioeconomy sectors (upstream) are considered partly bioeconomy industry (Figure 1) (see Cingiz et al. (2021) for the details of fully and partly bioeconomy industries included).

Finally, we define the value added of the bioeconomy as the summation of all downstream, upstream, and fully bioeconomy VAs. We implement the proposed measurement approach across all EU Member States. The input-output tables are taken from OECD statistics (OECD, 2021). For nominal to real value conversion, we use the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) from Eurostat (base year 2015) and the nominal exchange rate coefficients are taken from OECD statistics.

Across EU Member States, the average share of the bioeconomy in VA for the 2016–2018 period ranges from 2.8 per cent in Luxembourg to 17.2 per cent in Lithuania (Figure 2). Except for Luxembourg, the share is above 6 per cent in all Member States for both periods. For the EU-27 and the United Kingdom, the share of the bioeconomy in VA is 8.6 per cent for the 2016–2018 period.

Figure 3 illustrates the relative importance of upstream and downstream bioeconomy VA in selected countries with the most developed bioeconomies. In Luxembourg, Belgium, United Kingdom, Denmark, Spain and Italy, the total of downstream and upstream VA constitutes at least 50 per cent of the total bioeconomy.

This shows that there is a strong linkage and integration between these two sector types. The bioeconomy VA generated outside the primary bioeconomy industries can create more VA than from the primary bioeconomy industries. Partly bioeconomy industries, through upstream and downstream linkages, make a significant contribution to the entire bioeconomy and therefore, should also be considered when discussing the significance of the bioeconomy in the overall economy.

Further information available at: https://datam.jrc.ec.europa.eu/datam/mashup/BM_BIOECONOMIC_SHARES/index.html.