The value of renewable resources, together with the discussion on sustainable crop cultivation, has gained increasing political and corporate interest and economic importance. Renewable resources from agriculture and forestry play a key role in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions due to the uptake of CO₂ by plants.

Renewable resources themselves are considered as neutral with regard to their emissions of CO₂, i.e. they release the same amount of CO₂ at their end-of-life stage as they have fixed during their growth. On top of that, however, are the emissions that are produced, for example, during cultivation and harvest of the renewables or the further processing into products etc.

Current political guidelines on a national and EU level are working towards increasing, in particular, renewable sources of energy in energy supply and specifically the use of biomass. However, the material use of renewable primary resources in the form of innovative materials and products is increasing significantly.

The increase in the production and use of renewable primary resources is not necessarily seen as completely positive and advantageous from an environmental point of view:

• The production of renewable primary resources and/or their processing, can sometimes give rise to significant environmental burdens.
• Environmental organisations often believe that the cultivation of plants for energy generation impedes the production of ecological foodstuffs.

The conflict of "renewable resources" vs. the environment is also apparent from an economic perspective. Agriculture receives financial aid for environmentally-oriented agricultural production processes, but on the other hand the cultivation of biomass for energy production and for power generation is also financially supported, according to the "Act on Granting Priority to Renewable Energy Sources"(EEG).

Whether the environmental effects of adopting renewable resources are positive or negative is influenced by:

• which renewable resources are adopted,
• whether it concerns a specially produced raw material or residual material from agricultaral production for other purposes is used,
• how the resource will be further treated and
• which disposal procedure will be adopted.

Since the use of renewable resources is a fairly new field, and relatively little valuable experience on its environmental impacts exists, individual case studies on ecological and economic analyses of the uses of renewable resources are required.