Environmental impact is an essential aspect for the introduction of algae production systems. As information of large scale algae production is hardly available, process simulation is the only way to evaluate environmental sustainability in an early phase of process design. Simulation results allow the evaluation of production and design scenarios, and reveal the potential to improve the Life Cycle Performance of algae production systems. In this work, we discuss how choices in the process design of algae production systems (cultivation, biorefinery and the supply chain) advance LCA-results. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.