Upscaling bio-based chemicals and plastics in the EU

This policy brief analyses the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of an upscaling scenario of the bio-based chemicals and plastics sectors in the EU related to the baseline presented in the study “The EU bioeconomy towards 2040”. Assumptions relate to an upscale of the sectors’ share of bio-based output to 15% of total production, a high technology growth environment, and nonfood biomass use amounts to 30% of biochemical inputs. Bio-based chemicals and plastics are expected to generate 22.1 billion each in the upscaling scenario for 2040, compared to 9.8 billion from chemicals and 4.4 billion from bio-based plastics in the baseline scenario. On the employment side, the upscaling scenario would increase the jobs by 230.000 to reach about 360.000 in the two bio-based sectors. GHG emissions in the two bio-based sectors slightly increase. However, this is offset by an overall reduction of emissions from both the entire chemicals and plastics industries. Examining the consumer demand driven footprints, i.e. accounting for cradle-to-grave use of domestic and imported intermediate inputs, there is an increase in terms of the land footprint, given the higher reliance on bio-based feedstocks, while emission footprints remain at similar levels.