Benchmarking Biopharma’s Carbon Footprint

CRB’s Matthew Snyder, Kurtus Kahle, and Kevin Tomko collaborated with GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) Daniel D’Aquila in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing’s “Benchmarking Biopharma’s Carbon Footprint” to establish a baseline value for carbon emissions contributions.

While GSK had developed carbon footprint models for small molecule products in other business units, the biopharmaceutical business unit within its R&D organization began a pursuit to understand the environmental impact of monoclonal antibody and therapeutic protein production in order to better inform their efforts toward the achievement of the GSK Vision for Environmental Sustainability. The intention was to establish a baseline value for carbon emissions contributions in the biopharma area, and identify process or operational modifications that could effectively reduce that value in future processes and products. This article examines GSK’s efforts to identify where, in the biopharmaceutical manufacturing process and product value chain, the largest contributors to carbon emissions and water usage exist. It is hoped that the conclusions uncovered may help biopharmaceutical companies focus on specific opportunities for carbon footprint reduction more quickly.

The year-long study resulted in the development of a rigorous model to examine primary and secondary manufacturing across three products in the biopharma space.

For the full results of the study, read the article here.