Continued battery innovation is crucial for meeting accelerating energy demands. Replacing flammable battery liquid electrolytes with solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) can drastically improve safety, decrease cost, and enable lightweight and flexible designs. Natural materials as the basis for solid electrolyte development offer a route to sustainably innovate for high-performing batteries. A sucrose-based solid polymer electrolyte was developed that displays high room temperature lithium ionic transport properties, with ionic conductivity of 4.28 x 10(-4) S cm(-1) and lithium ion transference number of 0.76. Lithium sulfur batteries assembled using the synthesized electrolyte achieve a discharge capacity of 1302.7 mAh g(-1) initially and 620.4 mAh g(-1) in the 257th cycle at 25 degrees C and 0.1 C, and 517.5 mAh g(-1) in the 200th cycle at 45 degrees C and 0.2 C. These results demonstrate the potential of nature-derived materials for sustainably furthering innovation in the green energy sector. (C) 2017 The Electrochemical Society.