Can we assess innovative bio-based chemicals in their early development stage? A comparison between early-stage and life cycle assessments

The chemical industry strives for the development of bio-based alternatives to prepare for the transition towards a sustainable biobasedeconomy. Key in this transition is ‘safe and sustainable by design’. This entails that safety and sustainability must be taken into account at the earliest possible development stages. A remaining challenge is how to assess the sustainability and safety of a new production process while it is not yet established. Assessment methods have been developed for this purpose but they do not seem to be commonly used in Research and Development (R&D) departments. The aim of this paper is to review and evaluate the available early-stage assessment methods (ESM) and ex-ante life cycle assessment (LCA). Using the case of lactic acid in a retrospective study, its different development stages were anticipated. The outcomes of implementing the selected ESMs and ex-ante LCA at the different development stages of lactic acid were compared with those of a full LCA of the real production at commercial scale. Key findings are that 1) many ESMs are often not fully or clearly described and the databases suggested are outdated; 2) since most of the methods are designed to assess chemicals in general, not specifically for bio-based chemicals, the relevant environmental themes to reflect the characteristics of bio-based chemicals are often missing; 3) in terms of toxicity impacts, the reviewed methods are often crude and not accurate in the coverage of toxicity aspects. Ex-ante LCA could play a more important role during the process design R&D phase. However, ex-ante LCA should be complemented with accessible methods to evaluate the potential toxicity impacts at the early development stage to ensure safe by design.