Addressing environmental sustainability of biochemicals

Ögmundarson, Ólafur; Herrgård, Markus J.; Förster, Jochen; Hauschild, Michael Zwicky; Fantke, Peter

doi:10.1038/s41893-019-0442-8

Cited by 149 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…With respect to individual impact categories, special attention should be given to global warming, land and water use, eutrophication, ecotoxicity, and indirect land‐use change for the system using first generation biomass (Ögmundarson et al, ). When comparing our study with earlier studies of similar scope and system boundaries (Ingrao et al, ; Vink & Davies, ), our results vary by a factor of 0.6–2.5 for global warming impacts of LA/PLA production from corn.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moving from fossil‐based to bio‐based chemicals, however, also comes with challenges. These range from high production costs and difficulties in matching performance properties of fossil‐based chemicals, to questionable improvements in environmental sustainability profiles of biochemicals and derived products (Hottle, Bilec, & Landis, ; Ögmundarson, Herrgard, Forster, Hauschild, & Fantke, ; Zhu, Romain, & Williams, ). Yet, there are also positive examples, where the production of bio‐based lactic acid (LA) has shown to perform environmentally better than functionally equivalent fossil‐based products (Vink & Davies, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, cultural and geographical differences in waste handling can further influence conclusions, depending on—among other aspects—whether waste is incinerated with or without energy recovery, landfilled, or composted. It furthermore remains unclear, where the main environmental impacts occur along the life cycle of each selected feedstock production system with its specific technological maturity level (Ögmundarson et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Focusing only on selected life cycle stages and processes can additionally introduce a shifting of the burden, for example, from reducing GHG emissions during feedstock processing to potentially larger impacts during waste handling (Laurent, Bakas, et al, ; Laurent, Clavreul, et al, ). To avoid such “burden shifting” when assessing and optimizing the environmental performance of biochemical production systems, it was earlier proposed to include at least land‐use and water use, eutrophication, and ecotoxicity impacts, in addition to commonly assessing global warming (Ögmundarson et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, there is a large variation in the coverage of life cycle stages across these studies, leading to potentially unaddressed burden shifting between life cycle stages. These trends and limitations suggest a strong need for the development of a more comprehensive overview of the differences in environmental performance profiles across feedstocks, life cycle stages, and impact categories, to identify sustainability related optimization potentials of biochemical production from conventional and emerging bio‐based feedstocks (Ögmundarson et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Environmental hotspots of lactic acid production systems

et al. 2019

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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.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Environmental hotspots of lactic acid production systems

et al. 2019

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Design and engineering of artificial biosynthetic pathways—where do we stand and where do we go?

Sokolova,

Peng,

Haslinger

2023

FEBS Letters

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The production of commodity and specialty chemicals relies heavily on fossil fuels. The negative impact of this dependency on our environment and climate has spurred a rising demand for more sustainable methods to obtain such chemicals from renewable resources. Herein, biotransformations of these renewable resources facilitated by enzymes or (micro)organisms have gained significant attention, since they can occur under mild conditions and reduce waste. These biotransformations typically leverage natural metabolic processes, which limits the scope and production capacity of such processes. In this mini‐review, we provide an overview of advancements made in the past 5 years to expand the repertoire of biotransformations in engineered microorganisms. This ranges from redesign of existing pathways driven by retrobiosynthesis and computational design to directed evolution of enzymes and de novo pathway design to unlock novel routes for the synthesis of desired chemicals. We highlight notable examples of pathway designs for the production of commodity and specialty chemicals, showcasing the potential of these approaches. Lastly, we provide an outlook on future pathway design approaches.

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