Biochemical production faces economic and environmental challenges that need to be overcome to enable a viable and sustainable bioeconomy. We propose an assessment framework that consistently combines environmental and economic indicators to support optimized biochemical production at early development stages. We define internally consistent system boundaries and a comprehensive set of quantitative indicators from life cycle assessment (LCA) and techno-economic assessment (TEA) to combine environmental and economic performance in a single score. Our framework enables the identification of trade-offs across environmental and economic aspects over the entire biochemical life cycle. This approach provides input for the optimization of future biochemicals in terms of overall sustainability, to overcome prevailing obstacles in the development of biochemical production processes.

Using selected bio‐based feedstocks as alternative to fossil resources for producing biochemicals and derived materials is increasingly considered an important goal of a viable bioeconomy worldwide. However, to ensure that using bio‐based feedstocks is aligned with the global sustainability agenda, impacts along the entire life cycle of biochemical production systems need to be evaluated. This will help to identify those processes and technologies, which should be targeted for optimizing overall environmental sustainability performance. To address this need, we quantify environmental impacts of biochemical production using distinct bio‐based feedstocks, and discuss the potential for reducing impact hotspots via process optimization. Lactic acid (LA) was used as an example biochemical derived from corn, corn stover, and macroalgae (Laminaria sp.) as feedstocks of different technological maturity. We used environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), a standardized methodology, considering the full life cycle of the analyzed biochemical production systems and a broad range of environmental impact indicators. Across production systems, feedstock production and biorefinery processes dominate life cycle impact profiles, with choice in energy mix and biomass processing as main influencing aspects. Results show that uncertainty decreases with increasing technological maturity. When using Laminaria sp. (least mature among selected feedstocks), impacts are mainly driven by energy utilities (up to 86%) due to biomass drying. This suggests to focus on optimizing or avoiding this process for significantly increasing environmental sustainability of Laminaria sp.‐based LA production. Our results demonstrate that applying LCA is useful for identifying environmental impact hotspots at an earlier stage of technological development across biochemical production systems. With that, our approach contributes to improving the environmental sustainability of future biochemical production as part of moving toward a viable bioeconomy worldwide.

The impact-intensive and rapidly growing pharmaceutical industry must ensure its sustainability. This study reveals that environmental sustainability assessments have been conducted for only around 0.2% of pharmaceuticals, environmental impacts have significant variations among the assessed products, and different impact categories have not been consistently studied. Highly varied impacts require assessing more products to understand the industry's sustainability status. Reporting all impact categories will be crucial, especially when comparing production technologies. Biological production of (semi)synthetic pharmaceuticals could reduce their environmental costs, though the high impacts of biologically produced monoclonal antibodies should also be optimized. Considering the sustainability potential of biopharmaceuticals from economic, environmental, and social perspectives, collaboratively guiding their immense market growth would lead to the industry's sustainability transition.

The unique characteristics and composition of macroalgae offer new possibilities for the production of bio‐based products such as biofuels and commodity chemicals. The technologies required for processing macroalgae are not currently mature enough, and those that exist are primarily oriented towards the production of biofuels. This study explores a production process to produce lactic acid (LA) from brown algae, designed with a capacity of 11 t h⁻¹ of product. Four scenarios are simulated in Aspen Plus, for the production of polymer‐grade LA, utilizing Laminaria macroalgae as a feedstock. Techno‐economic models are established to investigate the feasibility of these new technologies. Configurations for heat recovery are suggested to maximize productivity, and a minimum viable selling price (MVSP) is calculated for LA to predict an optimal design configuration. The process does not recover investment, when using a composition represented by an avarage value for all the Laminaria sp. Moreover, the percentage difference between the MVSP and the current selling price (SP) is 34%. Nonetheless, when using Laminaria digitata, which comprises of higher carbohydrates, compared to other Laminaria sp, the percentage difference between the MVSP and the SP is estimated to be 28%. If the hypothetical fermentation of alginate is considered, the invested capital is recovered by the 11th year. These results also highlight the need for research into the valorization of the alginate fraction, improving the microorganisms’ ability to metabolize alginate to LA or other relevant products. The development of the respective processes would be a step that the scientific community would be justified in examining. © 2020 Society of Industrial Chemistry and John Wiley & Sons Ltd