Process development in the pharmaceutical industry is oriented to several key objectives, like yield or purity; and energy usage is normally given only a secondary consideration. On the other hand, there is a growing interest to give a greater weight to environmental factors as an integral part of the decision-making process at the Research and Development (R&D) stages of design for drug manufacturing. Therefore, there is a need to assess the energy usage throughout the development stage, to be able to quantify the changes in the development phases and evaluate the total environmental benefits due to energy optimization. In the present work, energy life cycle information is developed to provide environmental input into process selection and development within the pharmaceutical industry. The evaluation and comparison of energy requirements and energy-related emissions at various stages of the development process for a pharmaceutical product was conducted. It was found that the main optimization in energy usage for this specific system takes place during the pilot scale stage in the process developments (about 70% energy reduction). The reductions in energy usage are translated in even higher reduction of total energy-related emissions (for the full-scale processes, around 80%). It could be clearly seen that energy optimization in the early stages of process design translates into a lower level of emissions related to the use of energy.