Carbon Footprint and Embodied Energy for Sugar Production: A case Study of Sugar Industry, Tamil Nadu, India

Food and allied industries mainly contribute to the country’s GDP. Among the food industries, the sugar industry plays a pivotal role in producing food and energy products. The present study aimed to assess carbon footprint based on a gate-to-gate life cycle assessment approach and identify the hotspots of greenhouse gas emissions to promote carbon neutrality. The estimated carbon footprint for the selected sugar industry was 199.4 tonnes of CO₂ eq per tonne of sugar produced, to which electricity was a significant contributor. The milling process is the most critical contributor (40.1%) to embodied energy, cost, and electricity consumption in the sugar process, followed by cane fibrizers (21%) and Juice heaters (12.1%) stages. The embodied energy consumption for the sugar product is 49,052,795.75 MJ/tonne, and the total greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of sugar produced is 10,452,103. Based on the assessment, short and long-term goals are suggested to reduce the carbon footprint and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in the sugar industry.