Global warming potential associated with Irish milk powder production

Highlights

Global warming potential of milk powder production in Ireland is assessed.

The GWP of 1 kg milk powder is 9.731 kg CO₂eq.

The standard deviation for the GWP of 1 kg milk powder is 2.26 kg CO₂eq.

The most significant contributor to GWP is raw milk production at 84%.

Processing of raw milk into milk powder accounts for 14% of the total GWP.

Abstract

Climate change is an ever growing issue and a major concern worldwide. Both producers and processors need to address the issue now by reducing their carbon footprint. Additionally, if Ireland is to meet their climate and energy targets, as outlined in Food Harvest 2020, which outlines a range of objectives for the Irish agricultural sector, the efficient use of resources and fuels within the industry will need to be increased. In Ireland, agriculture accounts for 29.2% of the total greenhouse gas emissions (58.5 million tonnes CO₂eq). Therefore, in this paper, a single agri-food product, milk powder, is examined in order to estimate the global warming potential (GWP) associated with its manufacture using life cycle assessment. A cradle-to-processing factory gate analysis, which includes raw milk production, raw milk transportation to the processing factory, its processing into each product and product packaging, is assessed in this study using data collected circa 2013. The factories surveyed processed approximately 24% of the total raw milk processed in the Republic of Ireland in 2013, which was 5.83 billion liters. The average total GWP associated with the manufacture of milk powder is 9.731 kg CO₂eq·kg⁻¹ milk powder, which has a standard deviation of 2.26 kg CO₂eq·kg⁻¹ milk powder, for the life cycle stages analyzed in this study. The most significant contributor to GWP is raw milk production (84%), followed by dairy processing (14%), with the remainder of the life cycle stages contributing approximately 2%.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Dairy / Global warming potential / Ireland / Life cycle assessment / Milk powder / Milk production

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the funding provided by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for the DairyWater project (Ref.: 13-F-507); for additional details: www.dairywater.ie. The second author would like to acknowledge the support of Science Foundation Ireland through the Career Development Award program (No. 13/CDA/2200).

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