AstraZeneca Aims to be Carbon Neutral by 2025

Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca plans to invest up to $1 billion in a scheme it calls Ambition Zero Carbon, which as the name suggests is aimed at achieving zero carbon emissions from its global operations by 2025.

A key element of the plan is developing next-generation pressurized metered-dose inhalers for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with almost no negative impact on global warming. The new inhalants will use propellants with a GWP score 90% to 99% lower than older products.

To achieve its zero carbon emissions target, AstraZeneca said it is accelerating its existing science-based targets by more than a decade. These include doubling energy productivity and using renewable energy for both power and heat, as well as switching to an all-electric vehicle fleet.

Ambition Zero Carbon’s goal is to make the company’s operations responsible for zero carbon emissions without relying on offset schemes to reach zero emissions on aggregate. The drugmaker said it will also ask its suppliers to cut their own carbon emissions in order to become carbon negative along its entire value chain by 2030.

“I believe we’re facing a climate crisis, and every company has to do something,” AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said in an interview with the Bloomberg news agency. Soriot has joined the Sustainable Markets Council established by Britain’s Prince Charles with the support of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

AstraZeneca was recently added to the global environmental impact nonprofit CDP’s annual A List of corporations leading in environmental transparency and performance, thereby joining a slowly growing effort by the manufacturing sector to reduce its carbon footprint.

Other pharma players on the current list include Bayer, Baxter, Eisai, Johnson & Johnson, Lundbeck, Novo Nordisk and Ono Pharmaceutical.

At the recently ended J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Takeda CEO Christophe Weber said the Japanese drugmaker aims to be carbon neutral during 2020 by offsetting 4.5 million t of emissions. Weber said Takeda can meet its commitment without changing its financial target, because it has cut emissions in the past.

Last year, Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk announced it will use only renewable electricity at its production facilities by this year, mostly through exploiting solar energy.