Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of Raw Sugar Manufacturing

Summary

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a standardised method for quantifying the environmental impacts of the inputs, outputs, and emission across all relevant phases of a product life cycle. The purpose of this LCA project is to help the industry better understand, benchmark, and improve it’s environmental performance.

The industry does not have a contemporary assessment of its environmental hotspots and impacts along the raw sugar value chain.

Additionally, the industry needs to understand missed opportunities for using LCA outputs to benchmark and improve the industry’s environmental performance to support activities such as trade negotiations and sustainability reporting.

         
This project is funded by The Department of Primary Industries and Sugar Research Australia.

Objectives

  • To make detailed recommendations for using LCA outputs to understand, benchmark, and improve the Australian sugar value chain’s climate change, resource use and environmental impacts.
  • To use LCA to develop a detailed quantification of the impacts along the Australian raw sugar value chain.

Expected Outputs

  • Sugarcane lifecycle model that meets ISO (International Standards Organisation) accepted standards.
  • Easily interpretable and understood LCA inventory dataset.
  • Recommendations on how to best present LCA data to industry and key stakeholders.

Expected Outcomes

  • Industry can benchmark its environmental performance by region and against other sugarcane production countries.
  • Industry can use LCA data to inform R&D investments that target environmental hotspots and production leakages along the raw sugar value chain.
  • Industry can generate environmental performance data for sustainability reporting (social licence to operate) and trade/market negotiations and take advantage of potential price premiums

Industry is better able to demonstrate its social responsibility and improve community trust.

SRA PROJECT CONTACT: Cathy Mylrea
RESEARCH AGENCY: Sugar Research Australia

CHIEF INVESTIGATOR: Simon Clarke

PROJECT NUMBER: 2024/024

END DATE: 30/04/2026

Acknowledgements

This project is funded by The Department of Primary Industries and Sugar Research Australia.