The study explores potential future developments for energy crops use resulting from less or more favourable socio-economic and political framework conditions (by means of explorative scenarios derived from the four scenarios of the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment). Scenario analysis for the global scale as well as for the European Union and for Germany is performed. In addition, own scenarios for Germany in 2020 are derived on basis of the four explorative MEA-scenarios, and the result for Germany's global land requirement is investigated (differentiating between domestic and foreign land). The study will thus contribute to a realistic evaluation of future energy crop production. In this context, the competition with food and material non-food biomass uses is analysed. The goal is to point out problematic dimensions of competition with food production and the possibilities to consider these problems when devising political strategies for promoting bioenergy.

The study refers to recent projects of the Wuppertal Institute in which Business-as-Usual and alternative scenarios for a global and national sustainable land use for material and energy supply by renewable raw materials in Germany were developed.

The study further analyses and evaluates the potential for the technical use of biomass in Germany, as well as how the promotion of energetic biomass use influences the competition with different other use types. Special emphasis was put on the question, which impact supporting measures for energetic use of biomass have on import as well as on development and competitiveness of the traditional biomass using industries.