April 2026 Brown Bag Webinar Recap

Overview

Laura Kowalski shared how Primient uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to translate sustainability investments into measurable business value and competitive advantage. Through real examples—from switching coal to natural gas cogeneration to modeling regenerative agriculture at scale—she demonstrated how LCA helps identify hidden carbon hotspots across the value chain, inform decarbonization strategy, and respond to growing customer demand for product carbon footprint (PCF) data.

Key Themes

1. Customer Demand for PCF Data Is Accelerating

Over the past 4-6 years, Primient has tracked a dramatic shift in customer requests—from sporadic sustainability inquiries to concentrated demand for product carbon footprints. This regulatory and market-driven pressure is pushing suppliers to provide primary, verified PCF data rather than generic industry averages. Customers need this specificity to meet their own Scope 3 emissions reduction targets and regulatory requirements.

2. LCA Reveals Hidden Carbon Hotspots Beyond Site-Level Operations

Most companies focus on Scope 1 emissions (what they can see and control at their facilities). LCA reveals the full picture—including supply chain impacts, ingredient production, and processing nuances. For Primient, this meant discovering that corn production (40% of their carbon footprint) and on-site energy use drive impact far more than transportation, enabling smarter investment decisions.

3. Scenario Modeling Justifies Capital Investment and Strategy

LCA's power lies in scenario analysis. By modeling alternatives (coal vs. natural gas vs. biogas, cogeneration impacts, regenerative agriculture adoption at scale), companies can quantify the real carbon reduction potential before making major capital commitments. This makes the ROI case to executives and helps build realistic decarbonization roadmaps.

4. LCA Data Becomes Your Competitive Advantage

Understanding your company's relative PCF compared to competitors creates strategic advantage. Primient worked with an industry group (Corn Refiners Association) to establish an industry average LCA, then conducted company-specific LCAs to understand where they outperform. This data becomes both a customer conversation tool and an internal strategy compass.

5. Regenerative Agriculture Gets Real Through County-Level LCA Modeling

Rather than talking theoretically about regenerative agriculture benefits, Primient used LCA to model actual field data from their regenerative agriculture partnerships across their entire supply shed. This revealed the true carbon impact of cover crops, reduced tillage, and yield improvements at scale—turning sustainability claims into quantifiable business narratives customers believe.

6. Customers Are Evolving from Data Collection to Procurement Weighting

The trajectory is clear: customers started asking for baseline year PCFs (to capture past reductions), are now demanding current-day primary data, and will soon use PCF to weight or rank suppliers in procurement decisions. Companies that get ahead of this shift gain pricing power and customer loyalty.

About the Speaker:

Laura Kowalski, Head of Sustainability & Marketing at Primient

Laura serves as Head of Sustainability & Marketing at Primient, a leading provider of plant-based solutions, where she plays a critical role in shaping the company’s long-term growth strategy. In this enterprise-wide leadership role, Laura sets and advances Primient’s sustainability agenda—driving progress across decarbonization, regenerative agriculture, water stewardship, and sustainability-focused business development—while also leading the evolution of the company’s marketing function.

With deep experience in corporate sustainability within manufacturing organizations, Laura is widely respected for her ability to translate a complex and rapidly evolving sustainability landscape into clear, actionable strategy that strengthens operational performance, reduces risk across the value chain, and delivers value for customers and stakeholders. Her work ensures sustainability is fully embedded into how Primient operates, grows, and partners across the bioeconomy.

Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering and a master’s degree in Sustainable Management from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and two sons, and enjoys cooking and traveling.

Edited Webinar Transcript:

Opening & Introduction to Webinar

[00:14:38]

Tess Konnovitch: Laura serves as the head of sustainability and Marketing at Premium, a leading provider of plant-based solutions, where she plays a critical role in shaping the company's long-term growth strategy. In this enterprise-wide leadership role, Laura sets and advances Premium's sustainability agenda, driving progress across decarbonization, regenerative agriculture, water stewardship, and sustainability-focused business development, while also leading the evolution of the company's marketing function. With deep experience in corporate sustainability within manufacturing organizations, Laura is widely respected for her ability to translate a complex and rapidly evolving sustainability landscape into clear, actionable strategy that strengthens operational performance, reduces risk across the value chain, and delivers value for customers and stakeholders. Her work ensures sustainability is fully embedded into how Premium operates, grows, and partners across the bioeconomy. Laura holds a Bachelor's degree in environmental engineering and a Master's degree in sustainable management from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and two sons, and enjoys cooking and traveling. And my name is Tess Konnovitch, and I'm the Scientific Marketing Manager here at EarthShift Global. So this presentation is really exciting for me. I know I'm going to leave with a number of new lessons and learnings.

About Primient

[2:00]

Laura Kowalski: 

So excited to be here today. Thanks to EarthShift for having me. We've worked with Earthshift over the last 3 years or so, and have had great experiences, so happy to share some of our insights and how we've been able to use the LCA results internally and with our customers. So, Premium's a leader in the bioeconomy solutions industry, so we're dedicated to providing our customers with innovative and sustainable solutions, and what we do is we manufacture corn-derived products that are used in many different applications, including carbonated beverages, confectionery products, paper and packaging, and animal feed.

And so, our customers are some of the world's most recognizable food and beverage and consumer brands, so you can kind of see that play through in how they value sustainability.

Our largest manufacturing sets are corn wet mills that grind dent corn into plant-based products that fall into five larger families that are seen on the screen. So, acidulants, which, like citric acid that can be used on your favorite sour candies, or as a natural preservative in household products. Agrifunctionals, which includes products like ethanol or animal feed.

Natural diols, which I'll talk about a little bit later, but they're a drop-in replacement to, like, a propylene glycol that can be used in personal care products or other industrial applications.

Performance starches that are traditionally found in paper-based products, but also can be used in personal care applications.

And then sweeteners, which are most notably found in food, but can be in other, really cool applications, like building materials, or as a substrate for industrial fermentation processes, which, again, is a teaser for later. So, most of our manufacturing is in the US, but we do have some operations in Brazil, and our products do have a global reach. They are shipped all over the world.

We have been a company under a few different names, for almost 120 years. I think next year will be 120, but the last four we have been Primient, and while most of our identity as an organization has been spent as a corn processor, we're increasingly focused on growth opportunities in the bioeconomy.

And for those of you that are not familiar with that term, the bioeconomy uses renewable bio-based resources to produce food, energy, materials, industrial ingredients, and more, with the overall aim to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and that will play into our conversation later as it relates to the role of LCA in these conversations, since that's obviously a value driver for, customers in that space.

So, I think this slide helps bring our value chain to life, and it shows kind of an example of how we build sustainability into every step, from crop to customer.

So, our process starts in the field. We source dent corn from farmers in the U.S. Midwest, and we make sure we do our part to ensure it's grown sustainably. So, our regenerative agriculture program provides education and resources to farmers within our supply shed, so we're able to define our supply shed down to the county level in the U.S. Midwest, and that's across more than 1 million acres. That we are able to encourage, and enable regenerative practice change that helps drive resilience at the farm level, but also ensure a healthy corn supply chain, for our business. About half of our corn comes directly to us, either through our grain elevator network or directly to our manufacturing plants, and the other half is sourced on the commodity market. And in this example, we're talking about our Loudoun, Tennessee wet mill, which is one of three wet mills that we have in the U.S. And this wet mill is the southernmost wet mill in the entire United States, so we're uniquely positioned to serve customers in that southern geography. And this wet mill happens to be ENERGY STAR certified. It's one of two, wet mills with that ENERGY STAR certification. Both are premium plants, so we're really proud of that. And what that means is that this plant sits at the top 25% from an energy efficiency standpoint amongst all wet mills in the U.S. And one of the driving factors to this recognition is that we were the first in our industry to transition entirely off of coal, and we did that in 2021.

So, our wet mill manufactures corn syrup, along with other products that are made with the remainder of the corn kernel, but in this example, that corn syrup is piped over to our neighboring natural dial facility, and this facility used to be a joint venture of ours, but we've recently acquired the other half, so it is a fully owned Primient facility at this point. And that facility was built with co-location in mind, so it was intentionally built next door to our, wet mill to reduce transportation needs, as well as find other efficiencies, other sustainability benefits for co-location. So, one of the other benefits, other than less trucks on the road trucking the corn syrup to the natural dial facility, is that our wet mill cogeneration facility that makes steam and electricity for our wet mill is also able to make steam for the natural dial facility. It's a really, energy-efficient process where we're able to kind of leverage one fuel source for, multiple energy outputs.

And that diol facility uses the corn syrup to feed an industrial fermentation process. So, sounds like a big word, but kind of like how yeast feeds a fermentation process in bread making, so you can kind of think of that simple example in your everyday life. And what that creates is a 100% plant-based bio-PDO, or propane diol.

And what propane diol is, is essentially a building block, and it's a drop-in replacement for a propylene glycol, which is a petroleum-based product, so this would be the bio-based, 100% bio-based product that can replace a petroleum-based product. And it can be used in a lot of applications, like footwear or other performance polymer applications, personal care products, heat transfer fluid, coatings, and other household care products. So, I like how this slide not only, like, walks you through the value chain, but it also quantifies how much of an impact a plant-based product can have, because it tells you that you're taking one acre of corn, you start with one acre, and that can end up creating 7,300 pairs of plant-based sneaker insoles, so the insole of the sneaker would be 100% plant-based, which is really cool. And so there are a lot of other great applications, but this is just one cool one that kind of helps bring it to life and quantify the impact of just one acre of corn.

This is our fun slide (8:56). So I love how this slide brings our products to life. So some of you might be able to relate that when you work for a B2B or a business-to-business company, your products can be hidden in plain sight, so it's hard to articulate the impact. So I love how this slide takes a room that you're in every day and points out all of the different places where premium products end up. So, some of the other applications of that bio-PDO that we just talked about are the shoe insole, the soccer ball, sunscreen, and then there's that rug that's over by the grill outside, so, that bio-PDO can go on to be polymerized and made into a bio-based textile that can go into things like rugs or other textile applications. That's a cool one. A couple other fun ones to point out are corn sweeteners that can be used in wall insulation, which is not something that typically anybody thinks of, but actually can be used as a replacement for formaldehyde. So, not only is it a plant-based product drop-in that has a sustainability story, but also a human health benefit, which is really cool. And then to call out some of our performance starch applications, again, use in products, personal care products, like that sunscreen, so both our Bio-PDO and our performance starches can go into personal care products like sunscreen. And then performance starches can also go into charcoal briquettes that you use in a grill. And then also, more traditional applications, like packaging, like in those Amazon packages that somehow show up on my doorstep every day. So, just a couple of call-outs, but I like to leave this slide up just to kind of let everyone see Primient come to life.

So, like any sustainability strategy, our strategy starts by understanding materiality, so that we can understand, as a business, where to dedicate our resources. So, these are the four key focus areas that are the most material to our business and our customers and our stakeholders. So, just to go through them, decarbonization, I think that's relevant to every company, so it's a bit of an obvious one, but also plays into LCA and the role that LCA plays in our business and our customer conversations. Regenerative agriculture, this also overlaps with our decarbonization focus, since it's an outcome of regen ag practices are carbon reductions and removals, but there are other inherent outcomes of regenerative agriculture as well that help create a more resilient supply chain, increase crop yield, which also has carbon impacts and other financial impacts, and helps rural communities thrive.

Our third one, water stewardship, we couldn't run our corn wet mills without water, so, obviously very relevant and important to our business. And if you're a water nerd like me, we have a really cool water process flow diagram that was in our 2023 impact report, that just shows how water can be used multiple times, up to 30 times in our processes before it's treated and discharged back into the same watershed that we pulled it from. So, we're really dedicated to using water that's a shared resource responsibly within our plants. And then we're also increasingly cognizant of the overlap between water and regenerative agriculture. So, practice changes like a cover crop or reduced tillage can often have outcomes like reduced runoff that can result in water quality improvements in local watersheds. So, trying to understand and quantify a lot more of those impacts, which I think is very, important from a storytelling perspective and just an awareness perspective.

And then lastly for us is sustainability-focused business development, which is really that same focus on the bioeconomy that we've talked about already, so using plant-based solutions to drive down product carbon footprints, which is obviously very relevant from an LCA perspective.

So just to do a flyover, so I talked about how decarbonization was a focus for us. We do have approved science-based targets that we got approved a couple of years ago, so this, again, will play into the importance of LCA in our conversations. So our targets are 1.5 degrees C aligned, and we do have FLAG, forest land and agriculture goals. So just to kind of go through these really quick, our Scope 1 and 2 emissions is a 46.2% goal. It's on that 10-year pathway with the 2019 baseline up to 2030. Scope 3, E&I emissions, a 46.2% reduction, and then Scope 3 flag emissions, a 26% reduction. We were the first in our industry to have flag goals, so, we're really proud of the work that we've done in the regen ag space. And then that last one, zero deforestation supply chain, that goal is by 2025, and it has been reached, so since I talked about how, our corn is coming from the U.S. Midwest, that's really very well-established, farmland, so there really isn't significant land use change or deforestation to worry about in our tight supply chain.

So, this slide (14:28) gives a little bit more background on our decarbonization journey that I'll refer to when I talk about LCA later on. So, I talked about how in 2021, we finished the transition of our wet mills that were running on coal over to natural gas-powered cogeneration. And for reference, cogeneration basically uses one fuel source to create two, energy streams, so you can use the waste heat. For us, it's creating electricity and steam using natural gas as a fuel source, which is more efficient than a traditional boiler system that would just use one fuel source to create steam. So this made us the first, corn wet milling organization to move entirely away from coal. And, not only is there that inherent lower carbon footprint from just the switch from coal to natural gas, but then there's, like, kind of the upstream emissions, which again, I think LCA can really help you articulate, because when you're looking at capital projects and payback internally, you're really looking at on-site energy use, usually, what's right in front of you. So, I think LCA can be really critical to help you to understand the full impact. So, for us, a couple other things there are we didn't have to truck coal to our site every day, we didn't have to remove ash every day, so a lot less trucks on the road on our behalf has both a carbon impact and a cost impact to us.

And I talked about, this a little bit earlier, but, this investment was really a primary driver in our wet mills being the only ones recognized with the ENERGY STAR certification. So we're really proud to have some of the most energy-efficient wet mills in the country.

Materiality & Sustainability Strategy

[00:16:07]

So, we talked about the concept of materiality driving our sustainability focus areas, and I think the call-out there is that we, as a business, are very customer-focused. And given that many of our customers are in that food and beverage sector, they tend to be very focused on sustainability, because that is a consumer-driven, value proposition. And then, additionally, with our growing customers in the bioeconomy, again, low product carbon footprint does tend to be a value driver for those plant-based products that are hitting the shelves in our customer conversations. So, I'm guessing that those of you that are in sustainability roles in the private sector are very familiar with the concept of customer-related requests and all the surveys and Excel files that you're getting on a regular basis, so that's what this chart is tracking. So, we've been tracking those customer requests over the years, and not only are we tracking the quantity of customer requests, but we're tracking, what topics are covered in those customer requests. And what we've seen over the past 4 years is a huge increase in the percentage of those requests asking for product carbon footprint or PCF data. This trend is very clear. It's very clearly telling us that PCF or LCA data is very important to our customers, and therefore it should be very important to us. And just a note, I'm somewhat using the terms product carbon footprint, or PCF, and life cycle analysis, or LCA, interchangeably. I realize they're not exactly the same. The LCA would have a lot more data beyond just carbon, but for us, what our customers have been really interested in is that carbon component, so, they tend to be interchangeable in my brain. So, apologies for the kind of interchanging of the terms.

So, when we started to see an increase in customer requests for product carbon footprints, we started to engage with EarthDhift, and our first engagement with them was actually through an industry group that we're a part of, the Corn Refiners Association, or the CRA, which is made up of all the U.S. corn wet milling companies. And so EarthShift was actually brought in on behalf of the CRA to complete, industry average LCA for all of the corn wet mills. So it took data from all 13 U.S. wet mills and was able to roll it into an industry average to not only help in customer conversations that we were having, we were all having in the entire industry, but also to, understand comparisons to other ingredient alternatives. So, this empowered the industry as a whole to be able to articulate value.

And then once that study was published in 2023, Premium started to work with EarthShift individually to complete LCAs for our specific product families, so then we actually had an industry benchmark to measure ourselves against, which was, really cool. And so, it was great to work with the EarthShift team because they had this background and the experience in our industry, and they were able to build a model that could allow us to articulate the Primient-specific value.

So, Primient doesn't share LCA results publicly, but the CRA LCA report is publicly available. I think you should be able to potentially click on the link. If not, maybe someone from Earthshift can drop it in the chat for reference. But I'll be using those charts from the publicly available study to kind of talk through how we used results internally. So a great benefit of having an LCA is being able to validate where the hot spots are in your process. From a carbon perspective, obviously could, look at other impacts, but I think for us, we've definitely started with carbon.

So, I think when organizations think about carbon, they tend to be very focused at what's happening at the site level with their Scope 1 emissions, which makes sense, because it's what we see in front of us, and it's also what we can directly impact, because it's what we usually own. But LCA helps us to see what isn't right in front of us, so there's a lot more data behind these charts, but if I look at the first bar in this chart for the global warming potential, I can see that the main drivers of carbon impact are in corn refining and corn production, so it lets me see where we want to go a click deeper, and where there's perhaps diminishing returns. Like, in this case, transportation, because like I mentioned, our supply chain's kind of tight within the U.S. Midwest, so there's really not a huge transportation impact.

Oh, something to note with, with all the LCAs that I'm talking about today, they are, scope is cradle to gate, meaning it's from the inception of all of the ingredients up to Premium's manufacturing gate. So anything downstream transportation, anything with customer processing, consumer use, and end of life are not included in scope here.

So, clicking into the corn refining bucket, so that's what's happening at our manufacturing plants, that's the largest, piece of carbon impact in our LCA. And so, within that, it's really on-site energy use that I talked about a little bit, so the use of coal or the use of natural gas. And so here's where the power of scenario analysis was able to help us understand decarbonization levers, and I think without LCA, you can model, like, plant-level changes in fuel type, but I think that's, like, more of a one-dimensional look. So, LCA lets you not only see that Scope 1 facility-level impact, but also the supply chain Scope 3 emissions impact. So, in this example the majority of U.S. corn wet millers were still using coal when this data was collected, so it models alternative fuel options, like natural gas and biogas, and the impact of cogeneration, or making both steam and electricity from a single fuel source, so this can help in internal conversations when you're thinking about investment and decarbonization to meet your science-based targets, or your other carbon reduction targets, and it can help in customer conversations when you're asked for decarbonization roadmaps. So when you commission, like, a full LCA with EarthShift, you're not just getting this graph, but you're getting, like, a full report, which, again, this one's publicly available, so this is a cool table that I pulled, but then there's, like, more, breakdown within there. But, the EarthShift team is so great to work with in helping you model, like, your appropriate scenarios and troubleshooting, like, which emissions factors to use, and what's relevant to your industry and your systems, and there's so much nuance that they really work through with you. So there's just, like, so much value in the data when it's so specific to your operations and your industry.

So the second bucket in that initial bar chart that we looked at was, showing that a large impact on the overall PCF was corn production. So I don't have a great graph from the publicly available LCA to be able to show that and unpack what's going on, but for us, we've modeled that even further in our Primient-specific LCA, so we were able to kind of click into, some of the pieces that could be impactful for us. So, I mentioned earlier that deforestation isn't really, like, a concern, so the impact of land use change might not be, a big impact. So again, something that you can model: Is land use change a big piece of the carbon impact? So since U.S. farmland has been around for many years, there isn't that large impact from there, but we can look at other things like crop yield and fertilizer use and other regen ag practices that can help you inform where to invest from a decarbonization standpoint. So, when we did our Primient-specific LCA, we did focus here a little bit more so that we can understand, the impacts of things like cover crops or increasing yield or nitrogen reduction, and we were actually able to use real data from our regen ag partnership that we already had. And we could model it, so we could take data from a field that had planted a cover crop for many years, and model it across our entire supply shed, and understand, like, if our whole supply shed had planted cover crops or done no-till, what would that look like at scale from a LCA perspective, or product carbon footprint perspective? So, things like this are really helpful in taking your theories of, like, if we were to widely adopt regenerative agriculture across our supply chain, to actually, like, bring the story to life and tell you, like, the full-blown carbon impact. So it helps in executive-level conversations, or any other stakeholder conversations where you're able to articulate the true impact and justify, investments for the greatest impact. So, I just like this chart because I think it tells a story with the data, which I think the EarthShift team does really beautifully. So, in the study of all of the U.S. corn wet mills, corn was obviously sourced from multiple states across the U.S, so this looks at and models corn yield within those states. So, we talked about corn yield potentially impacting product carbon footprint, but this goes, like, a click deeper and shows you where corn yield is the highest, and so that could also help you understand, like, where would you want to invest in trying to increase corn yield? So again, like, if you have a regenerative agriculture program, where you're able to understand and target certain states where you'd want to, increase regen ag adoption that hopefully increases corn yield. This can kind of help you decide where to focus those interventions.

So, you can use this, this to see that could have an impact in some of the states that have lower yield, like Kansas or North Dakota, but maybe not have as much of an impact in Iowa and Illinois. So, kind of like data-driven decision-making. And then, another kind of use thing that came to mind with this chart for us was that, it can help you tell a story to kind of articulate where your corn is sourced from. So for us, we're primarily sourcing from Illinois and Indiana, so corn yields are already quite high in those states, so it kind of helps to again, tell the story about your product carbon footprint, and share how it's already, well-leveraged in that sense, right? So corn yield might not necessarily have the biggest room for improvement, but maybe we focus our regen ag efforts, in other places where we can have an impact on that overall corn production part of our LCA.

So the other great use of LCA is being able to articulate sustainability value to your customers or your key stakeholders. And so, in this LCA that was done, on behalf of the Corn Refiners Association, there were 13 plants that were considered. So if you're looking at just one company's results, I think you'd have to, commission a comparative LCA to be able to create charts like this, but the EarthShift team can work you through what's possible there. So for us, we found this data really helpful because we were the first corn wet miller entirely off of coal, so we were able to use this chart to articulate our Primient-specific value and the inherent value of Premient-made products. Because of that really singular shift from coal to natural gas. So, I think it's one thing to be able to just say that you're bringing value to your customers and you're dedicated to sustainability, but when you can show data like this that really tells a story, it comes to life with with LCA.

Science-Based Targets

[00:28:08]

So I thought I would end with a slide about what we've learned over the past few years on our LCA journey, and then I'm happy to answer any questions that come up. So first, customers are looking for primary data. So they want to increase the accuracy of their Scope 3 accounting, because many of our customers have science-based targets or other decarbonization targets. So, I think this increase in a desire for accuracy is largely driven by regulatory pressure to report third-party verified Scope 3 emissions data. So, companies are having to look at reasonable levels of assurance that requires supplier-specific product carbon footprints, rather than global or regional averages from just a database. They're needing that level of specificity that they haven't necessarily needed in the past. And then, these customers aren't collecting data just to collect data. They're collecting it because sustainability is important to their customers, or general consumers, and investors. So they all have a vested interest in eventually reducing their carbon emissions. So, eventually, we do think that we will see customer requirements to reduce PCFs to help meet Scope 3 targets, or potentially meet regulatory requirements.

Since many organizations do have science-based targets, we're seeing them not only ask for current-day PCFs, but also baseline year data, so they can take advantage of any reductions that have already occurred. So, like, for us, I mentioned we got off of coal in 2021, so they might want, like, a pre-coal number to plug into their baseline, and then a current day number, so they can kind of take advantage of that reduction to date, and model that into their Scope 3 emissions.

And then, we are starting to hear that customers will eventually use PCF data to somehow rank or apply a weighting to their suppliers based on relative product carbon footprint, like, within an industry. So, this is hard to predict when it will fully integrate into procurement decisions, but we are seeing it become increasingly important in commercial conversations. And then, finally, understanding the value of your company's data and your relative product carbon footprint, I think is really critical in these conversations, and it can help you understand your roadmap, your strategy, your value, and just overall empower your company that much more.

So, with that, I am happy to answer any questions that have come up.

Q&A

Thank you, Laura, and thank you everyone who submitted questions. Please feel free to add any additional ones you have, and I will start reading through them now.

 What do the colors in the Hidden in Plain Sight slide mean?

Sure, yeah, this is a fun one. So, I'll just leave this slide up a little bit more, because I know it's fun to look at, but across the bottom, I know it's small, it talks about our different product lines. So, the blue quarter circle is a corn sweetener, the yellow circle is what our performance starches would be in. The orange quarter circle is an agrifunctional product, and then the green leaf is an acidulant.

Has it been a before and after for you using LCA and building sustainability strategy? Would you recommend using it, even if your customers aren't asking for it? 

I think that I use the term, like, "one-dimensional". I think that, like, without LCA, you can have a sustainability strategy that's really one-dimensional. You can usually model, like, energy use at a manufacturing site pretty well. I think, like, any engineering team can model that pretty well, so you can look at, like, what your Scope 1 emissions are, but I think LCA really brings to life the Scope 3 part of it, all the things that you can't measure, and obviously, not only do those things have a carbon impact, but they have a cost impact, too. So, helping see where the hotspots could be, and where you could actually find both carbon reduction opportunities, as well as cost savings opportunities, so that example of moving away from coal. So, obviously, moving away from coal had a financial payback, a sustainability impact with just the fuel use. I think when you switch from coal to natural gas, it's like 50% of the carbon impact, just from, like, a fuel use perspective, but then, like, something that wouldn't have been thought about if we didn't look at an LCA, would be, like, the trucks that are on the road. So, like, there were multiple trucks every day coming to our plants, bringing coal, and then also multiple trucks every day hauling off ash. So that obviously also has a cost implication, so I think, like, LCA just lets you find the data behind some of the things that you're thinking about. You might think that, uou know, certain things have an impact, but then you're able to, like, actually chart it out.You might think you need to focus on upstream transportation, but then, like, LCA brings this to life, and it says, no, your efforts might actually be better focused elsewhere. So I think it just helps you have data behind it, which I think in any, like, investor conversation, executive conversation is really critical. You can't really come in and say, like, I feel like we should invest here, you have to have the data behind it. So, I do think LCA just, like, gives you that much more insight to your carbon story.

If we are only a distributor of the product and not the manufacturer, how do you think lifecycle assessment could be implemented?

Yeah, interesting. LCA is all about articulating not just your Scope 1 emissions, so obviously as a distributor, you have really minimal Scope 1 emissions. It's about articulating your Scope 3 emissions. I think what would be tricky as a distributor is that you would need to provide a lot of data to be able to model in LCA, so I think you'd have to work really closely with your suppliers to have that data and have that partnership, which we have done. We have had customers that are, in that bioeconomy space, where this is their main value driver to their product. So we've worked closely with them, to provide data so that they can build their LCA, which, obviously, our LCA is a part of it, right? So, I think it would have to be a partnership, and, I think there's obviously always value in those kinds of partnerships, and, like, the value chain conversations and more connectivity, but, certainly some data needs that could be trickier from a distributor perspective.

 What kind of efforts or actions do they undertake in conjunction with their clients to reduce Scope 3 emissions, in addition to providing data for decision making?

I think a great example of that is in our regenerative agriculture programming, so we can partner with customers. So, from a regenerative agriculture standpoint,  multiple companies in that value chain can take advantage of the same work that's going on, right? You can kind of follow that same corn kernel through the whole value chain, right? So, like, if we partner with our customers to implement regenerative agriculture practices and essentially pay farmers to, let's say, plant a cover crop. There will be carbon, reductions that we can take advantage of, and every link in that value chain can take advantage of that per greenhouse gas accounting guidelines. So, we as Primient can take advantage of that carbon reduction in our Scope 3 or our product carbon footprint. Our customer can take advantage of that same carbon reduction. Their customer… so it just kind of goes down the chain. That's a great example of, like, partnering. On the same acre that follows through the value chain, where we all win, and then if we spread the cost out amongst all of us, so like, you know, the farmer has a component that they're paying, we have a component that we're paying, the customer has a component that they're paying, and so on down the value chain, I think that's a great example of, like, how we can spread out the impact so that there isn't, like, this huge impact to the consumer on, an increase in a cost of a product for a sustainability benefit, because we know a consumer's not willing to pay double for something, right? So how can we spread it through the value chain, but then obviously also partner so that we all win.

Could you please speak a bit about how the flag emissions targets were decided, and how all of the targets translate to the company's bottom line?

Yeah, sure. So, I'm not a complete expert on science-based targets, but I believe that if you have a certain portion of your Scope 3 emissions, I think it's 20%, coming from Forest, Land and Agriculture, or FLAG, you have to set a flag goal after a certain point. So I think that certain point was, like, 2023. Science-Based Targets Initiative said that if you set goals after that point, you had to set a flag goal if you met that 20% threshold. You'll have to fact-check me on the threshold.

And so we had to set that flag target, because  we solely process corn, so it's a huge part of our, our story, and our value chain, and our carbon impact. And then you talked about, or you asked about how, this impacts the company's bottom line. So, couple of answers there. So, first of all, our customers are definitely asking us to set science-based targets. That is something that's important to them because they have science-based targets. And then, not just from a science-based target perspective, but for our customers in the bioeconomy, sustainability and product carbon footprint tends to be a value driver for them, so they're intentionally making a bio-based product, right? With the desire to be able to claim that, to be able to claim. So if you're making a shoe with a plant-based insole, that's part of your marketing proposition, right? You're gonna tell consumers.You know, this shoe's made with plants, and likely be able to charge accordingly for it, right? So, like, again, if we're kind of following that through the entire value chain. This is very important to our customers in the bioeconomy, and so, I think that's kind of how it goes back to our bottom line. What's important to our customers is important to us.

 Can you talk more about that and the impact your regenerative agriculture program had on your PCF?

Our regenerative agriculture program, I talked about how we enable regenerative practices across all of our corn acres, so it's a little over a million acres. So, what we're able to do there is provide education and enable farmers to transition practices. But then we're also able to get specific emission factors down to the supply shed. And, for us, since we're in the US, that's down to the county level. And so with our LCA journey, our regenerative agriculture program has county supply shed-specific emission factors, county-level supply shed emission factors. So, when we're modeling a product coming out of one of our plants, let's say our Loudon wet mill, we have a Loudon corn emission factor that we can plug into our LCA. And so, it's not just using, like, a global corn number, it's not just using a state-level corn number, it's really, like, specific to the corn that we're buying. We happen to already be sourcing from states that have really great corn yields, and a high corn yield translates to a lower product carbon footprint, because you're getting more out of that same, acre of land. So, we were able to use that, supply shed emission factor in our product carbon footprint, and then if I go a click further, our regenerative agriculture program also on a subset of our acres incentivizes practice change with farmers. So, we're actually paying farmers to, implement some of these practices, like cover crop or no-till, and then we're able to claim the carbon reductions and removals. So, then we can create LCAs that actually build those reductions into it. So, I talked about how we could, like, partner with customers on regenerative agriculture, and then we can actually create, like, a customer-specific product carbon footprint that builds in those practice changes. So if we partner with a customer on, you know, X acres of land, we can then mass balance that LCA so that we're using those regenerative grown acres in our LCA, and then inherently lowering it.

Is that supply shed emission factor data publicly available, or is that proprietary to Primient?

Yeah, so I believe state-level corn emission factors are publicly available, or maybe database available. You might need to buy a database subscription, but, our supply shed emission factor is proprietary to Primient; so we are actually using modeling, where we're partnering with a company called SIBO to model our supply shed. So our supply shed's not going to be the same as anybody else's, as we're buying from certain counties, and then we can average those counties' supply shed, or county-specific emission factors into our Primient supply shed emission factors. So it's very specific to our operations.

Are there other trade associations that may benefit from a similar LCA study, and how would you value proposition such as study?

Yes, so the conversation that led to the CRA creating this LCA, or commissioning the LCA, predates me, so I wasn't around for those conversations, but I can try to guess at what kind of was the impetus for it. I think, you know, we as an industry work together to understand trends that we're seeing for our customers, and how we can better position our industry to have favorable outcomes? How can we work together to ensure that we're telling the same story? How can we work together to make sure that we're resilient for, long-term business success? So, I assume that many of our customers were starting to ask for this data, and; that allowed us to, you know, pool together, essentially, and leverage EarthShift to be able to create that industry average number that was able to empower us as an entire industry. So, do I think other industries could benefit from this? Absolutely. Data is power, and I think, like, if you have multiple companies all pooling together to do this, it doesn't end up being that cost prohibitive, so I think that's super helpful. So, I think you have to have the driver of customer pressure or investor pressure, and then, you know, being able to articulate the savings and the benefits to doing it as an entire industry versus doing it all individually.

So besides product carbon footprints, what are other things that you find coming up in customer requests?

Sustainability just tends to be a lot of different trends that are constantly changing. That's why I love my job. It's not the same thing ever. It's, like, constantly evolving, because it's a relatively new, function. And so, in the past, we've gotten a lot of, like, biodiversity questions, water questions, and then I think, like. Over the past year and a half, we've really seen it concentrate to PCF or LCA, because I think that's where all of these things come together. Like, you can articulate carbon, water, biodiversity, all within that LCA framework, so we're really seeing a more cohesive ask for that. I don't want to say singular metric, but, like, it tells the whole story within that piece of it. So, it's very concentrated on LCA or PCF right now. The other thing that we're starting to see questions on is traceability. Which I think is, like, you probably need a whole other hour on that, because in the commodity world, traceability can get very tricky, and so I think that that's, like, another big topic from a commodity perspective, especially with the new land sector removal standards that have come out that are requiring a level of traceability that is just really tricky in the commodity space. So that's maybe one of the other hot topics we're seeing from customers.

What challenges have you faced within your company to ensure that, in addition to providing data for the LCA, internal areas take ownership of their role and contribution in reducing negative environmental impacts, and how have you overcome them?

Yeah, that's a good question. Not a lot comes to mind, to be honest. I think in our industry, you know, there just tends to be great payback on energy efficiency and investing in some of these decarbonization, opportunities, and at Primient, we're kind of at the point where, further decarbonization would require advancement in technology. So, like, you know, beyond natural gas, in order to get the steam needs that we would require for our processes, we would need something like hydrogen, and that's just not widely available yet. And so, I would say we haven't had a lot of internal resistance. Perhaps we just have a culture that's really based in sustainability, I think that when you, are an agricultural processor, you have a good respect for the land and agriculture, and sustainability maybe means something different. It maybe means more, like, how do we sustain this land for years to come? And so, I think it just maybe is built a little bit more into the culture at Primient, so sorry to not necessarily answer your question, it just doesn't feel like it's a big issue for us. We've had a great culture around that.

I wonder if you could elaborate on the importance or relevance of your regenerative agricultural program.

So, obviously, you know, the corn production is 40%, at least, of our product carbon footprint. So, it's really important to us from a carbon perspective, but then also, like I said, we're solely processing corn, so from, like, a reputation perspective, we want to make sure we're investing in the farmers that are sustaining our businesses. So, it's really important that, we're partnering with farmers to ensure that they are de-risking their farms, so anytime you're investing in regen ag, you're really de-risking yourself to climate events like drought and  other natural disasters or unexpected, pests, things like that. So, I think it's really important to us from a reputational standpoint. Being able to drive down that product carbon footprint within that corn production piece, and, you know, being able to go a click deeper than this chart and then even a click deeper there, has been really critical for us in our storytelling. And then when we're able to articulate that to our customers to show the impact of our regen ag program, and the fact that we're able to get data down to the county level, it's really received very positively. They are impressed that we're able to model to that level, and that's, really, like, a cornerstone of our sustainability program.

Have you had any participation in biogas or RNG discussions? For example, American Biogas Council, and lessons around corn and land use?

Yeah, I do think the Primient team has been involved in some of those conversations. I have been maybe slightly aware of them, but not involved in them. I will say that, we do have some biogas at a handful of our plants that's, produced on-site, but, nothing at scale, so certainly something that we're keeping pace on, but, not something I've been directly involved in.