Seedless grape drying is an energy-intensive postharvest process that significantly impacts the environmental sustainability of China’s grape industry. This study evaluated seedless grape drying kinetics, energy consumption, and life cycle assessment (LCA) at 40, 50, 60 and 70 °C air temperatures as variable heating conditions. Computational modelling validated against experiments revealed a strong temperature dependence in drying kinetics. Higher temperatures (70 °C) resulted in significantly faster drying times (around 630 min) compared to lower temperatures (40 °C, around 1380 min). However, this came at the cost of high energy consumption values. Interestingly, energy reductions were noticeable above 60 °C due to significantly shortened drying times. The minimum energy required at given temperatures, with an air velocity of 2.5 m·s−1 and a relative humidity of 30 %, was 138.3 MJ at 40 °C, while the maximum was 198.1 MJ at 60 °C. Similar trends were observed in the overall LCA impact values, where convective drying contributed over 90 % of the global warming potential (GWP) across all scenarios. Energy consumption emerged as the primary impact driver, followed by slighter transport and agricultural production contributions. A multi-criteria analysis using the weighted sum method identified the 70 °C scenario as most favourable in balancing short-time drying, moderate energy use and low GWP impacts. This integrated approach demonstrates the potential for optimising the trade-off between drying performance and environmental impacts, which could advance low-carbon drying technologies and develop more sustainable food production systems.