Fossil Fuel Free Electricity (completed in 2014)

Biogen has taken a leadership position to manage our climate impact. In 2014 Biogen signed the RE100 pledge and immediately shifted our electricity consumption to renewable generating sources.

We have maintained 100% renewable electricity (RE) across 30 of the markets where we operate. In total, this equates to 99.94% of our global demand, with 0.06% remaining unmet in South Korea and New Zealand, where Biogen is facing barriers to sourcing RE in accordance with the strict RE100 criteria. We will work with other RE100 members to improve supply in these markets.

To date, this has resulted in the avoidance of more than 230,000 MT of carbon dioxide and tons of other air pollutants that harm people and the environment. Biogen plans to maintain its 100% fossil fuel free electricity in perpetuity.

Our journey with renewable electricity continues as we look deeper into the additionality that the renewable electricity we purchase provides. For example, in 2020, we signed a two-year contract to obtain 100% of the electricity for our Massachusetts, USA facility from a local renewable project.

Biogen-Owned Facility Electrification (planned for 2025-2040)

Biogen maintains four large manufacturing and R&D facilities: one in Massachusetts, USA; two in North Carolina, USA; and one in Solothurn, Switzerland. Each of these facilities burn more than 35,000 MWh of natural gas to heat, cook, generate steam and power our operations. Our engineering team is formulating strategies to operate these facilities without fossil fuel combustion by 2040. This may mean transitioning to electric heat pumps and steam generators or using technologies such as geothermal heating.

Our Massachusetts location currently houses a large natural gas cogeneration unit. Installed in 2006, this unit has significantly decreased our climate impact due to the efficiency gains of cogeneration of electricity and steam; however, emerging science points to health concerns associated with natural gas extraction, storage and combustion. With the rise of renewable electricity and technological improvements, we will sunset this approach and identify effective solutions to fill its role.

One of the more challenging components of building electrification will be backup power. As is common around the world, Biogen uses fuel oil powered backup generators. We will evaluate the feasibility of alternatives such as lithium-ion batteries and green hydrogen to meet our needs and ensure business continuity.

Leased Facility Electrification (planned 2025-2040)

Biogen leases numerous spaces around the world. As these are rented facilities, we plan to work with the building owners on plans to eliminate their fossil fuel impacts – and, in some cases, we may relocate to buildings that already have.

Biogen’s Massachusetts location houses a cogeneration unit, which has significantly decreased our climate impact. With the rise of technological improvements, we will identify effective solutions to shift to renewable electricity.

Support suppliers in converting to fossil fuel free, with clear expectations and targets (milestones: 2025, 2030 and 2040)

Biogen’s largest source of fossil fuel emissions and air pollution is embedded in the goods and services we purchase. Our approach is to deepen our relationships with key suppliers to support their incremental shift away from fossil fuels and toward a healthier clean energy future. We aim to support key suppliers in developing tailored action plans to accelerate this transition.

We have established the following collective expectations:

• By 2025, 80% of our suppliers, by spend, covering purchased goods and services, will set climate-related science-based targets (SBTs). As of 2019, more than 15% of our supplier spend had set SBTs with another 16% committed to setting one within the next two years.
• By 2030, 50% of our suppliers, by spend, will source 100% of their electricity from renewable sources. As of 2019, 1% of our supplier spend had achieved this target with another 14% committed.
• By 2040, 90% of our suppliers, by spend, will source 100% of their electricity from renewable sources.

To advance these ambitious targets, we recently engaged with key suppliers. From this engagement we received several commitments including from Vetter and Vifor Ltd, Fribourg site, to set science-based targets by 2025, and from Sharp, Vetter, and Vifor Ltd, Fribourg site to source 100% renewable electricity by 2030.

Additionally, as a member of the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative (PSCI), Biogen is collaborating with our pharmaceutical peers in the development of training modules for PSCI’s Principles e-Learning tool to cover specific environment, ethics, human rights and labor, and health and safety priorities. Suppliers will be assigned these trainings to improve their awareness and performance on these key environmental, social and governance issues.

Vehicle Fleet Electrification (planned for 2025)

Biogen’s fleet consists of more than 1,500 leased vehicles worldwide. As of June 2020, nine of those vehicles were battery electric vehicles. (Learn how we are implementing sustainable transportation in Portugal).

In 2020, we joined the EV100 partnership to help us advance our goal of converting every new vehicle lease to all-electric vehicles by 2025. We anticipate the full conversion to be completed by 2027.

To provide our fleet-operating employees with uninterrupted mobility and an even greater level of convenience, over the next decade, Biogen will install home EV chargers for each fleet driver and more than 500 EV charging points at our office locations.

We are also working with our Biogen Bus partner to electrify the employee commuter Biogen Bus fleet.

Establish new green chemistry targets (milestones: 2021, 2023 and 2030)

We are accelerating the integration of green chemistry into our operations – from discovery research through final formulation. As a member of the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) Pharma Roundtable, we employed the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry to realize a range of environmental benefits, reducing our water and energy input, use of fossil fuel-derived solvents and waste output.

With Healthy Climate, Healthy Lives, we are setting even more ambitious green chemistry targets:

• By 2021, Biogen chemists will devise green chemistry key performance metrics and targets specific to each of our processes and product types.
• By 2023, these metrics and green chemistry principles will be integrated into all stages of therapy development across the company.
• By 2030, all products will achieve greater than 90% of green chemistry targets.
• Expand on our collaborations to find innovation solutions to increase achievement.

Ideally, it would be easy to identify alternatives for all fossil fuel-derived ingredients and solvents by 2040; realistically, this will depend on technological and scientific advances. We will leverage our involvement in a number of industry and university collaborations including the IQ Green Chemistry Working Group, ACS and the Center for Rational Catalyst Synthesis with the goal to catalyze innovation not only within the design and manufacturing of Biogen products, but in the broader scientific community.

We have already delivered significant progress through Biogen’s Green Chemistry program. Read more in our Year in Review.

Like most companies today, Biogen uses fossil fuels across our value chain. Plastics are a notable example, and comprehensive, regulatory-approved alternatives do not yet exist at scale. We aim to pursue as comprehensive an approach as possible today and to refine our plans as technology grows.

Plastics and Packaging: While our use of fossil fuel-derived plastics is small when compared to other industries, plastics are pervasive in the pharmaceutical space. Biogen has been working to reduce material usage and waste, and in 2019 achieved waste reductions even as our business grew.

The quality and safety of our products is of paramount concern. Where the replacement of plastics with alternative materials will have no negative impact on the product, Biogen will work with industry coalitions such as PhRMA to coordinate with regulators to update manufacturing requirements.

After reviewing plastic usage throughout our operations, we identified four initial areas of focus:

• Single-use plastics, ranging from laboratory wares (e.g., pipette tips) to food-related items in cafeterias and breakrooms.
• Fossil fuel-derived raw materials or feedstocks, which will be addressed via our Green Chemistry program. 
• Non-essential plastics, including gifts and promotional materials.
• Product packaging, starting with the elimination of plastics in secondary and tertiary packaging by 2040.

Across all areas of our business, we aim to avoid waste through elimination of non-impactful material uses and identify alternative materials with a preference to reusable materials made from renewable feedstocks or highly biodegradable materials.

Where alternatives are incompatible with regulatory requirements, we will establish processes to enable closed-loop recycling of these materials over the long term.

Plastics are pervasive in the pharmaceutical space. Biogen has been working to reduce material usage and waste while maintaining quality and safety of our products.

As Healthy Climate, Healthy Lives  aims to eliminate fossil fuels, we must also consider where we are investing our money and the type of future it supports. It is our fiduciary duty to maximize the risk-adjusted returns of our investments and provide superior investment options within our employee retirement and pension plans. To that end, we will engage with our financial advisors around our fossil fuel free goal and evaluate ESG-focused companies and funds and other investment options with an eye towards enhancing long-term risk-adjusted returns. When those options meet our requirements, we will incorporate them into our retirement plans and corporate investment strategies.

Every Biogen employee owns this initiative. Fossil fuels are pervasive in our world, and our employees have an invaluable perspective on where and how we use them and the resulting impact fossil fuels have on their families, our patients, our community and our planet.

We intend to create opportunities for our employees to become even more actively involved in meeting new science-based targets – both in the office and at home. This includes:

• Providing a way for all employees to share their innovative ideas to eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels while promoting health equity and patient outcomes. This approach will ensure that projects receive thoughtful review and can be sustained over time.
• Establishing an employee benefit program to help our employees go fossil fuel free in their homes:
  • Full-time eligible employees can use this benefit towards the purchase of capital goods that help reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, such as an energy-efficient appliance, electric lawnmower, electric vehicle, solar roof, etc.
  • To help employees switch to 100% renewable electricity at home, Biogen will provide a fixed reimbursement to pay the increased utility cost or Biogen will directly purchase renewable electricity credits on behalf of employees to match 100% of their home electricity usage. By 2030 we aim to have 100% of employees participating in this program.
• Creating OurIMPACT, a climate-related Employee Resource Network.
• Expanding Biogen’s Care Deeply volunteer program to include new climate-related projects that enable our employees to amplify our positive impact in the places where we live and work.