Integrating assessments: Spotlight on sustainability and economics of innovative nutrition

03 Jun 2024 --- Customers and consumers increasingly focus on sustainable foods and diets, making it essential for nutrition companies to specify and measure their sustainability status. To meet this rising demand, some companies choose to conduct a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), which can calculate a product’s environmental impact throughout its life cycle. 

Nutrition Insight meets with Edward Spang, an associate professor of Food Science and Technology at the University of California (UC) in Davis, US, to discuss developments in sustainability assessments in the food sector. 

“Sustainability means different things for many people, and a lot of people immediately lean just toward the environmental metrics, and then even within that, it’s straight to greenhouse gas emissions,” explains Spang. “When we talk about sustainability [at UC Davis], we talk about the three pillars of economic, environmental and social sustainability.” 

“We haven’t all internalized the environmental objectives to optimize what you’re trying to do with your company. Some businesses have it as part of their core mission and are thinking about it early on.” 

Spang underscores the benefits of integrating sustainability analyses with a company’s assessment of its economic performance — a Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA). Companies may use these tools separately, conducting an LCA as an “add-on at the end,” especially since a full LCA can be expensive and time-consuming. 

However, if a company advances this sustainability assessment and integrates it with a TEA, the tools can help in its decision-making and have a greater impact. 

Assessing economics and sustainability 
Spang explains that a TEA is “fundamental” to understanding whether a new product or process can be scaled and be profitable. It helps answer questions such as: “Does the cost of the ingredients exceed what we can sell this for? Does the cost of the processing exceed what we can sell this for?”

“In advance of scaling up and investing something to scale, we model that. Fundamentally, what are the ingredients? What does the process look like? How are those processes linked together?” 

An LCA analyzes a product’s environmental impact, and a TEA assesses economic performance.For example, he illustrates that for a bioreactor, a TEA would factor in requirements on heating and the piping system but also consider the media needed to feed cells in a fermentation process or cellular agriculture for optimal growth. 

“It’s a collection of equations modeling biology, chemistry and engineering to assemble the entire process and estimate what we will have at the end of the day. It’s a rigorous process,” Spang underscores. 

An LCA is similar to a TEA, he adds. “Instead of looking at dollars and cents for all inputs and outputs, we’re looking at the environmental impacts of inputs and outputs of that process.” 

“The two go hand-in-hand,” he continues, “if you’re going through the process of creating this model, from a techno-economic perspective, it seems the LCA is the natural next step. It almost shouldn’t be two separate things. It can be the same process to analyze a process or product.” 

Reality check 
Spang highlights that a TEA can vary in terms of the rigor of the model used. Almost everyone starting a business would sketch out how much it would cost and at what price a product can be sold. At the same time, models vary in terms of rigor and detail. 

“When developing our model, we’re using engineering conventions to build a plant virtually and then see how it operates.” 

While the economic analysis must occur before going into business, an LCA is more of an “add-on” to illustrate a company’s achievements in sustainability. At the same time, Spang argues that an earlier LCA can help with decision-making. 

“If you bring it to the beginning when you’re sketching out your TEA to see if there’s some money to be made, the LCA can help identify where your pain points are in terms of your environmental objectives so you can think about redesigning the system around those additional objectives.” 

“That way, you’re trying to design a system that’s not just profit maximizing but also trying to figure out how to limit your environmental variables. At that point, you can decide — is it worth the additional investment now to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions later?” 

Integrating an LCA with a TEA can help identify pain points in environmental objectives and advance decision-making.Sustainability hotspots 
It has become increasingly important for companies to verify their sustainability status, for example, with an LCA. Consumer research published last month indicates fewer European consumers make healthy and sustainable choices. Meanwhile, the EU approved a Greenwashing Directive to address unsubstantiated claims on products’ environmental sustainability. 

Spang explains that in an LCA, a company can model its system and processes and assign an environmental variable of interest to its subprocesses to help identify a “hotspot” and seek alternatives. 

“But it also helps to consider different environmental impacts, such as greenhouse gasses. There are some traditional frameworks we use for quantifying the overall environmental impacts of a product or process, such as TRACI, from the Environmental Protection Agency, which contains a list of variables — eutrophication, acidification, greenhouse gas emissions, water use, primary energy use and a host of others.” 

“Some companies might not just be focused on the greenhouse gas emissions; they might be in a place that has limited access to water, so water use is their focus,” he continues. 

“It gives you a spectrum of environmental variables, not just reducing them to one. And it gives you that differentiation across your process to zero in on where you can make a difference with a new technology.” 

The LCA covers a company’s processes and provides a background story of its ingredients and sourcing, which sometimes has the largest impact, for example, when a company uses an ingredient with a much higher environmental footprint than it suspected. 

With an LCA, a company can model its system and processes and assign environmental variables of interest.He highlights that life cycle inventories carry many very common materials, so companies don’t necessarily have to do an LCA of every single ingredient but can leverage existing databases. 

“Next, you’re studying your process with primary data. It’s primary data, and then this background secondary data — you combine it to get the complete big picture. Another place where you can identify hotspots is upstream from your activity to create a meaningful impact there.” 

Emerging technologies 
Spang asserts that companies may not assess their sustainability with a rigorous LCA for some emerging technologies as the “excitement gets ahead of the rigor.” Large companies that want to launch a new product have in-house expertise and strong models for production, impact and expected returns. 

“But when it’s a venture capitalist, and someone’s looking for the next best exciting thing, and they’re trying to get first in line for that, some of those processes may get pushed to the background — that’s why we’re trying to fill that space.”

“As a university, we’re trying to de-risk for the public good. If no one’s investing in creating this knowledge, we can step in and help out because we want to see some of that investment go to things that will be successful and hopefully lead to societal good.”

Last month, Nutrition Insight talked to UC Davis’ Innovation Institute for Food and Health about its focus on bringing research and commercialization together, driving nutrition innovation with consumers in mind. 

By Jolanda van Hal