Pharma's net-zero goals; largest biopharma deal of 2021; drug patent pushback

European pharmaceutical companies are outpacing their U.S. counterparts when it comes to the scale and creativity of their net-zero goals, enabling greater progress on addressing other environmental challenges.

The EU's move to become the first international market to introduce financial penalties for emissions in 2005 gave the region's drugmakers a head start on many of their U.S. peers. Switzerland's Novartis AG in 2006 vowed to plant 15 million trees in South America, while Denmark's Novo Nordisk A/S struck a 2007 deal with fellow Danish company Ørsted A/S to secure all of its electricity supply from offshore wind by 2014.

By 2025, Novartis is set to achieve its net-zero and carbon-neutral goals, which are needed to bring industries' emissions into alignment with the targets of the Paris Agreement on climate change. That target date is one of the most ambitious among the top 30 largest European and U.S. healthcare companies by market cap.

Companies further along on carbon reductions are pushing suppliers to reduce emissions and looking to tackle waste in production and packaging. Progress on these environmental issues may pave the way for further efforts on more salient social issues such as access to medicines.

"Wasting the planet's resources is not wise, either from a financial or an environmental perspective," Katrine DiBona, Novo Nordisk corporate vice president for global public affairs and sustainability, said in an interview. "So many of these initiatives have also just been good business."

Path to net-zero: EU pharma accelerates pledges while US plays catch-up

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Editor's note: Essential Healthcare will be on a holiday hiatus beginning Dec. 29. We will return in the new year with more healthcare insights.

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