Environmental Footprint of Pea Proteins

Assessing the environmental footprint of plant-based protein ingredients requires consistent and comparable data across a wide range of raw materials and processing pathways – data that remain scarce in the scientific literature. This study presents a modular life cycle assessment (LCA) approach developed within the BMFTR (2025) project to generate cradle-to-gate environmental footprints for innovative protein ingredients, using pea protein as a case study. Generic process modules were derived from publicly available equipment specifications, validated against life cycle inventory (LCI) databases, and refined through consultation with industry experts and food engineers. Agricultural background data were sourced from the Agri-Footprint database (v6.3), and the analysis is based on German production conditions. Three pea-protein products were evaluated: pea flour (24% protein), pea protein concentrate (PPC, 50% protein), and pea protein isolate (PPI, 81% protein). Environmental profiles were calculated per 1,000 kg of product, with particular emphasis on climate change impacts. Both economic and mass allocation were applied; economic allocation was selected as the reference approach because the protein fraction represents the primary economic value generated by the production process. Under economic allocation, the carbon footprints of pea flour, PPC, and PPI are approximately 0.34, 1.40, and 4.74 kg CO₂-eq per kg of product, respectively. Under mass allocation, the differences between products are considerably smaller, reflecting the increasing energy demand associated with successive processing steps, particularly spray drying in PPI production. Comparison with five recent studies demonstrates that the results obtained with the generic modelling approach fall within the range reported in the literature, while also highlighting the substantial variability arising from differences in geographic scope, allocation procedures, and production scale. The modular framework presented here is intended for application across a broad range of protein sources, enabling systematic and methodologically consistent comparisons of innovative protein ingredients.