Modern medicine and vaccines have saved millions of lives, but this comes with an environmental cost. A 2019 report by Health Care Without Harm found that the broader health care sector contributes 4.4% of the global total net emissions. This is equivalent to two gigatons of carbon dioxide, the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 514 coal-fired power plants. If the health care sector, writ large, were a country, it would be the fifth-largest emitter in the world.
71% of the healthcare sector’s emissions come from the healthcare supply chain, including the biotech and pharma industries, according to a report by My Green Lab. As the pharma industry continues to grow, Big Pharma has signaled its willingness to monitor and limit its emissions. The top 25 public pharmaceutical companies have reduced their annual scope one and two carbon intensity by 12% each year since 2018. A broader set of 140 companies shows an average decrease in sector one and two emissions by 2% annually.
The GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard classifies carbon emissions by three scopes. Scope one includes direct emissions from owned or controlled sources, such as company facilities and vehicles. Scope two includes emissions from purchased energy consumed by the company. Scope three includes all other indirect emissions, such as transportation and distribution, investments and use of products.
In the same time period, the top 25 public pharma companies have decreased their scope three emissions by an average of 4% annually, according to the My Green Lab report. However, looking at a broader dataset of 140 companies, scope three emissions have risen by an average of 1% annually.
In contrast, private companies’ scope one and two emissions rose by 11% in 2023. Interestingly, private companies’ scope three emissions decreased by 7% in the same year. Overall, progress towards sustainability is slowly being made.
Looking at scope one and two emissions, the current estimated trajectory of 149 companies assessed by My Green Lab is on track with the net-zero 2050 scenario. If the estimates include scope three emissions, reaching the same scenario will require a 31% reduction in emissions by 2030 and an 81% reduction by 2050.
To align with the net-zero 2050 scenario by 2030, the industry must reduce its emissions by 64% compared to 2022 levels. As companies continue to incorporate cloud-based artificial intelligence into their daily operations, achieving these goals may become more challenging due to the high power consumption of data centers.
Putting industries’ environmental footprint into perspective
While the healthcare industry’s 4.4% contribution to global emissions is not insignificant, other industries play their own parts. Manufacturing and construction contribute 25-27% of global emissions, and transportation 21%. Cement production alone accounts for 8% of global emissions.
Carbon intensity, a measure that accounts for revenue when considering emissions, varies greatly among industries. Cement production generates 7 kilograms of carbon per dollar of revenue, while pharma’s emissions translate approximately to only 0.049 kilograms of carbon per dollar. However, the automotive industry produces 3.41 tons of carbon dioxide per million dollars, compared to pharma’s 48.55 tons per million dollars. This means that the pharmaceutical industry is 55% more carbon-intensive per revenue dollar.
The pharmaceutical industry’s emissions, while not the largest by sector, are still significant.McKinsey notes that the majority of the industry’s emissions are Scope 3. “By working with suppliers, companies can achieve net zero with 60 to 70 percent abatement at cumulatively zero cost,” the firm wrote in 2023.
Sustainability in pharma: achievable with effort
Many companies have adopted sustainability targets to lower their emissions, water use, waste and more. My Green Lab found that 31% of the 149 companies included in their study had targets aligned with a 1.5 °C pathway, the level of global average surface warming the Paris Agreement aims to stay below. Five pharma companies were included in Corporate Knights’ Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations list in 2024, the most sustainable of these ranked at 35.
Prominent pharma voices have signaled support for net-zero timelines. In 2022, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla announced the company’s commitment to achieve net zero by 2040: “Building on 20+ years of climate action, we are proud to set new, ambitious climate goals to commit to Net Zero by 2040.” In 2021, Merck CEO Robert Davis similarly committed to net zero, accelerating the company’s carbon neutrality target in operations. Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson, under CEO Joaquin Duato, has announced that it has achieved 87% renewable electricity globally. Other CEOs, ranging from Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks to Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s CEO have also put their weight behind sustainability issues. In 2021, Soriot characterized climate change as “the biggest threat to humanity” and committed $1 billion to the company’s Ambition Zero Carbon strategy. GSK CEO Emma Walmsley framed environmental sustainability as essential to business resilience. “Improving the environmental sustainability of our business makes us more resilient, so we can deliver the products that patients rely on,” she says in a quote on the firm’s website.
Asian pharmaceutical executives have aligned their environmental commitments with national carbon neutrality targets while embracing international sustainability frameworks. Takeda CEO Christophe Weber stressed the connection between planetary and human health: “We recognize that the future of human health is inextricably linked to the health of our planet.” Japanese competitors have established similarly ambitious targets, with Astellas committing in 2023 to net zero by 2050 and Daiichi Sankyo targeting a 63% reduction from FY2015 in 2030.
Chinese pharmaceutical companies have increasingly embraced global sustainability standards while aligning with China’s 2060 carbon neutrality goal. WuXi AppTec Vice Chairman Edward Hu, who chairs the company’s ESG Committee, celebrated achieving the #1 ranking in the Global Life Sciences Tools & Services Industry by S&P Global in 2024.
Several pharma companies are competitively ranked in Time’s World’s Most Sustainable Companies 2025 roster. Sanofi is in the tenth slot while Novartis is eleventh. AstraZeneca ranks 19th on Time’s list, while Biogen (26th) and Merck & Co. (38th) also made the top 50.
Sai Life Sciences, a contract research and development manufacturing organization, has set several sustainability goals, including reducing emissions by 30% and using 70% renewable energy by 2027. In an interview, Tuneer Ghosh, the executive vice president and head of chemistry, manufacturing and controls, emphasized the time and effort required to improve a company’s sustainability, “It doesn’t happen in one day. It doesn’t happen in two years. It takes a lot of effort over several years to get where we are.”
More than 90% of the energy used in the company’s manufacturing facility comes from renewable sources, Ghosh said. The company has also adopted a focus on green chemistry, reducing the amount of waste and energy used in chemical processes. Sai Life Sciences recycles 95% of the catalysts they use, Ghosh added.
Another company, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, is on track to utilize 100% renewable energy by 2030, said Rahul Mittal, the company’s head of strategy and innovation. The company focuses on three initiatives surrounding energy: conservation, efficiency and transitioning to renewable sources, Mittal said.
Dr. Reddy’s is a water-positive company, recycling and reusing all of the water in their manufacturing plants as well as working to rehabilitate local ponds and lakes. With the wide focus on emissions, water conservation has taken a backseat in the mainstream. However, it is still an important goal, especially as pharmaceutical processes use large amounts of water.
Dr. Reddy’s focuses on reducing both its upstream and downstream scope three emissions, creating a more sustainable supply chain, as well as reducing emissions associated with downstream transportation and distribution.
“Given that we work with so many suppliers, vendors and providers, improvements are robust and end-to-end in order to ensure that we achieve our goals,” said Mittal.
Environmental initiatives are not only good for the planet, but also for the industry itself. A study in Nature showed that environmental regulations actually improve pharmaceutical productivity by 16.5% through innovation incentives, challenging assumptions about trade-offs between sustainability and business performance.
The environmental impact of the peptide trend
Recently, the pharmaceutical industry has seen a rising trend in GLP-1 weight reduction drugs such as Ozempic. However, the synthesis of these peptides uses large amounts of hazardous reagents, leading to an increased process mass intensity (PMI), the ratio of the total mass of all input materials to the mass of the isolated product.
Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen directly acknowledged the fundamental tension between growth and sustainability in the 2024 Annual Report: “We also prioritise environmental sustainability – including nature and biodiversity – across our value chain and have a clear focus on decoupling our environmental impact from our growth as we progress towards our net zero 2045 emissions target,” he wrote. “This will be a significant challenge with emissions continuing to rise as our business expands to keep pace with demand, but we are determined to step up to the task.”
Peptide synthesis is “much dirtier when compared to standard small molecule chemistry,” said Ghosh, “I think it is our duty to understand that we are generating more waste.”
A study in the Journal of Organic Chemistry estimates that solid-phase peptide synthesis has an average PMI of 13,000. For a typical peptide, the PMI could be 15,000-20,000, Ghosh said. This means that to make one kilogram of a peptide, you would need 15 to 20 tons of reagents. This is approximately 40-80 times higher than traditional small-molecule drugs.
The JOC article concludes that “the high PMI for peptide synthesis warrants more environmentally friendly processes in peptide manufacturing.”
Developing cleaner and more sustainable methods of peptide synthesis could be essential to reducing the emissions of the pharmaceutical industry. Another study in The Journal of Organic Chemistry identified seven main challenges in sustainable peptide synthesis. Solving these issues will be a critical step if the popularity of GLP-1 treatments continues to increase.
Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic, a GLP-1, was the second-best-selling drug of 2024, generating $16.9 billion in sales, a year-over-year increase of 26%.
A 2024 survey by KFF found that about 12% of adults say they have taken a GLP-1 agonist. While 62% said they took GLP-1 drugs to treat diabetes or heart disease, approximately four in ten adults said they took them primarily to lose weight. Medicare’s lack of coverage for weight loss drugs may contribute to the number of patients taking GLP-1s for weight loss. Medicare is prohibited by law from covering prescription drugs used for weight loss.
While GLP-1s also have positive sustainability dimensions, developing a more sustainable method to produce GLP-1s could help to lower the GHG emissions of the pharma industry, as well as decrease the amount of waste produced by this process.
Filed Under: Drug Discovery and Development
