Sustainability concerns have increasingly gained importance among organizations and their stakeholders around the world. In this context, eco-efficiency has become a consistent tool towards the transition to sustainable development and the efforts of ecoefficiency indicators have been used for comparative studies and decision-making tasks, providing better financial, environmental, and social performance. The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review on the theme of sustainable development from the perspective of eco-efficiency, with the adaptation of the Knowledge Development Process intervention instrument -constructivist (ProKnow-C). The paper identifies and structures the state-of-the-art between Eco-Efficiency and Sustainable Development with a view to: (i) selecting a Bibliographic Portfolio (BP) that is aligned with the perception of the researchers on the theme; (ii) performing a bibliometric analysis of the selected BP; (iii) performing a thematic synthesis; (iv) finding the integration of eco-efficiency and sustainable development with other approaches; (v) proposing an innovative framework to achieve sustainable development through ecoefficiency indicators; and (vi) finding paths for further research. This research makes multiple new contributions, providing both academics and practitioners a better panorama to achieve sustainable development through eco-efficiency by expanding the literature review, highlighting the synergies and barriers between eco-efficiency and sustainable development and by comparing and analysing them, showing its relevant features. In addition, we synthesized the contributions of the BP according to the BASF indicators, sustainable dimensions and four measurement levels: industry, organization, project and process to better describe the current academic scenario on the subject.

The present work assesses water and power consumption, ethanol production and CO2 emissions in order to evaluate the technical and economic feasibility of a high-scale sugarcane-based biorefinery and propose a scenario of full carbon and capture system, so the complex could become a sustainable carbon withdrawer from the atmosphere. This work is performed with the aid of professional software for a rigorous mass and energy balances simulation to achieve process data for plant technical and economic analysis. The combustion of sugarcane bagasse is the only source of energy of the plant, which provides steam for the distillery and generates electricity through cogeneration system. The ethanol production from sugars fermentation produces CO2 which, jointly with the CO2 from combustion, is released directly into the atmosphere contributing to global warming. Results demonstrate that for processing capacity of 1,000 t/h of sugarcane, the plant emits 0.7 tCO2 per ton of sugarcane, with net water consumption of 3,600 m3/h as make-up water to replace blowdown and evaporation losses in the cooling tower. The cogeneration system generates 320MW of net power for exportation as electricity. The economic analysis reveals a fixed capital investment of 910MMUSD and a net present value of 378MMUSD considering as revenues the ethanol produced and the electricity from cogeneration at an annual discount rate of 10%.