DISCOVER THE BIOECONOMY AND BIO-BASED SECTORS IN EUROPE
A revolutionary shift involving long-term strategies and interactions at all levels is required to solve societal issues like climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and unsustainable consumption practices. The concept of a bioeconomy represents an opportunity to tackle these challenges and create the transformations needed in socio-technical systems. A bioeconomy can be defined as an economy where the basic building blocks for materials, chemicals and energy are derived from renewable biological resources[1]. The concept of bioeconomy was proposed by the European Commission (EC) in 2012[2] and established as a pillar of the EU in 2018 in the Bioeconomy Strategy[3].
With a current estimated value of €2.7 trillion, the EU bioeconomy already contributes significantly to job creation and economic growth in Europe. It employs more than 17 million people in the different bio-based sectors (around 8% of EU jobs)[4]. These sectors range from agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture to value chains based on biomass processing, biomanufacturing and biotechnologies – such as in food, health, energy, industry, ecosystem and other services. Biological resources include genetic resources as well as primary and secondary biomass, such as by-products and residues, and biogenic carbon captured through innovative technologies[5].
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT (LCA) AND TIME-DEPENDENT METHODOLOGIES: THE BIOECONOMY’S MISSING COMPONENT
The bioeconomy integrates all sectors and systems that depend on biological resources, their functions, and ecosystem service, including primary production and industrial sectors that transform biomass into products,
energy, and services. These activities require healthy ecosystems and, at the same time, can negatively impact them, making it essential to monitor and evaluate their environmental impacts[1].
In this regard, life cycle assessment (LCA) has evolved over the last 50 years, consolidating into international standards such as ISO 14040–14044 and impact models applicable to energy, agriculture, and other sectors. Its importance lies in its comprehensive analysis of entire value chains through quantitative inventories, relating emissions and consumption to impacts through observed causal relationships or interactions. This capability allows for comparisons of products and processes, identifies improvements, and guides transition toward a circular and sustainable bioeconomy, optimising biomas valorisation and its cascading use[2].
Despite its great usefulness, LCA faces limitations such as modelling complexity, inconsistent system boundaries, short time horizons, lack of data, costs, gaps in impact models, and sensitivity to political trends[3]. These challenges are accentuated in bio-based systems, where diverse technologies, extensive chains, and variability in land use, logistics, co-products, and cultural preferences complicate the assessment[4]. Furthermore, traditional approaches often ignore social and economic dimensions, although complementary methodologies such as social LCA (S-LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) can integrate them.
In the bioeconomy, the temporal evolution of impacts is critical as biomass absorbs carbon during its growth, partially stores it in products, and releases it at the end of its useful life. Conventional LCAs are typically static and do not reflect this dynamic. In contrast, the development of Dynamic LCA (DLCA) and inside it, the dynamic carbon footprint allows for modeling biogenic carbon flows and other impacts over time, considering: (i) temporal variation of impacts and background conditions (e.g., resource scarcity such as water); (ii) consistency with existing temporal metrics (e.g., Global Warming Potential (GWP), temporal carbon storage)[5]; (iii) assessment of planetary boundaries, such as global temperature thresholds[6]; (iv) changes in inventories, energy systems and markets over time; and (v) emerging regulatory compliance (ISO 14067, French regulation RE2020).
These methodologies are still underutilised, despite their relevance to the representativeness and accuracy of environmental assessments in bio-based value chains. Recent studies show that sectors such as bioenergy[7] or
bioplastics[1] have begun to model carbon flows over time, but face practical barriers: availability of temporal data, methodological complexity, lack of harmonised standards, and difficulty integrating co-products and waste. Documenting these applications and limitations helps contextualise the need to advance dynamic methodologies that more accurately reflect the impacts of the bioeconomy on climate and ecosystems.
LCA4BIO ADVANCEMENTS
In this context, LCA4BIO partners plan to improve and harmonise dynamic carbon footprint assessment, directly contributing to the development of DLCA in bio-based industries through improvements in inventories and impact characterisation. This has led to progress in integrating the temporal dimension through improvements in inventories and impact characterisation, allowing for a more realistic capture of the evolution of carbon flows and other climate drivers over time. These methodologies include considering carbon absorption and release dynamics in biomass, as well as assessing short-lived greenhouse gases, strengthening the accuracy of sustainability analyses and facilitating the identification of relevant impacts throughout the life cycle, supporting strategic decision-making in the transition to a circular bioeconomy.
All together, these actions strengthen the LCA’s capacity to identify temporary hotspots, more consistently assess the climate impacts of bio-based products and processes, and support strategic decisions aligned with sustainability and the transition to a circular bioeconomy in the EU.
If you want to learn more about dynamic methodologies for bio-based industries, don’t forget to stay tuned to LCA4BIO channels!
Author: Eva Penín
References
[1] McCormick, K., & Kautto, N. (2013). The bioeconomy in Europe: An overview. Sustainability, 5(6), 2589-2608.
[2] European Commission (2012). Innovating for Sustainable Growth: A Bioeconomy for Europe; European Commission: Brussels, Belgium.
[3] European Commission (2018). A Sustainable Bioeconomy for Europe: Strengthening the Connection between Economy, Society and the Environment; Updated Bioeconomy Strategy COM(2018) 673 Final; European Commission: Brussels, Belgium.
[4] European Commission. (2025, November 27). New plan to unlock the bioeconomy’s potential. https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/new-plan-unlock-bioeconomys-potential-2025-11-27_en
[5] European Commission (EC), Bio-based Economy for Europe: State of play and Future Potential—Part 2; DG Research and Innovation, European Commission: Luxembourg, Belgium, 2011.
[6] European Commission. (2022). Report from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: EU Bioeconomy Strategy Progress Report — European bioeconomy policy: Stocktaking and future developments (SWD 2022/162 final; COM(2022) 283 final). Publications Office of the European Union
[7] Sevigné-Itoiz, E., Mwabonje, O., Panoutsou, C., & Woods, J. (2021). Life cycle assessment (LCA): informing the development of a sustainable circular bioeconomy?. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 379(2206), 20200352.
[8] Nicolaidis Lindqvist, A., Broberg, S., Tufvesson, L., Khalil, S., & Prade, T. (2019). Bio-based production systems: why environmental assessment needs to include supporting systems. Sustainability, 11(17), 4678.
[9] Talwar, N., & Holden, N. M. (2022). The limitations of bioeconomy LCA studies for understanding the transition to sustainable bioeconomy. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 27(5), 680-703.
[10] Pigné, Y., Gutiérrez, T.N., Gibon, T., Schaubroeck, T., Popovici, E., Shimako, A.H., Benetto, E., Tiruta-Barna, L., 2020. A tool to operationalize dynamic LCA, including time differentiation on the complete background database. Int J Life Cycle Assess 25, 267–279. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-019-01696-6
[11] Guinée, J.B., de Koning, A., Heijungs, R., 2022. Life cycle assessment-based Absolute Environmental Sustainability Assessment is also relative. Journal of Industrial Ecology 26, 673–682. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13260
[12] DLan, K., Ou, L., Park, S., Kelley, S. S., Nepal, P., Kwon, H., … & Yao, Y. (2021). Dynamic life-cycle carbon analysis for fast pyrolysis biofuel produced from pine residues: implications of carbon temporal effects. Biotechnology for biofuels, 14(1), 191.