Social and environmental commitments

Chiesi’s commitments to carbon neutrality

In 2019, we publicly announced our decision to become carbon neutral by the end of 2035, well ahead of the 2050 target set out in the Paris agreement – and 15 years ahead of the UK national target.^1,2

Chiesi is not the first company to make a public commitment to reduce its carbon footprint. However, at Chiesi we want to cut through the language of corporate sustainability commitments which often focus on words rather than the actions required to achieve them, often using terms like carbon neutral, net zero and climate neutral interchangeably. If these actions are not independently verified by international standards, the commitments themselves are just words. To date, only a few companies refer to official standards to measure progress towards their commitments on an individual company level.

Chiesi’s journey to Net Zero

Chiesi believes true ‘sustainability’ can only be achieved with a holistic view to go beyond JUST offsetting emissions, by also reducing emissions in all aspects of its business.

With this goal in mind, we have committed to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2030 for direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (scope 1) and indirect GHG emissions from purchased electricity and heat (scope 2), and by 2035 for our other indirect GHG emissions (scope 3).

Our strategy is to:

In simple terms, Chiesi adopts a hierarchical approach to its mitigation strategy: Avoid, Reduce, Substitute and Remove. In this way, by avoiding carbon-intensive processes by design, we reduce the emissions we produce.

In line with this strategy, please see below key areas where we commit to reducing our carbon emissions:

Improving business operations, being as energy efficient as possible

Maintaining 100% renewable energy consumption at Chiesi sites that have already achieved this

Transition to 100% renewable energy at the remaining sites (where feasible)

Utilising sustainable chemistry as a way to eliminate, substitute and minimise the use of hazardous substances in our manufacturing sites

Electrifying the car fleet.
In 2021 we achieved electrification of about 20% of the car fleet and the installation of 70 additional charging stations at our facilities

Installing new technology at our manufacturing sites that aim to capture and reuse leaked propellant, reducing the carbon footprint from the manufacturing process.
Over the course of 2022, 61% of propellant from spray testing was captured

Transition to an environmentally friendly propellant into our pMDI devices, which has the potential to reduce the carbon footprint by 90%, bringing carbon emissions in line with DPI devices

Reduce GHG emissions with the goal of reducing emissions to the maximum extent

In 2021, our reduction targets were approved by the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi)³ – a robust, global reference framework designed to drive meaningful climate action in the private sector. This has helped to provide us with a clearly defined pathway to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and these targets are aligned with the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious goal to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

We aim to go beyond the reduction targets approved by the SBTi, by developing a reduction plan for each emission source in our greenhouse gas inventory, as well as identifying specific reduction targets. We believe that, for a meaningful and serious approach towards Net Zero, it is our duty to spare no efforts in minimising all emission sources but, at the same time, to implement measures to remove as much carbon dioxide as possible from the atmosphere. We also aim to continue our emission reporting actions in our Annual and Sustainability Report and within the Carbon Disclosure Project initiative (see below for more details).

Words don’t matter, actions do

Chiesi has also chosen to partner with a number of third-party organisations committed to tackling climate change.

• Carbon Disclosure Project,⁴ a not-for-profit charity that runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states, and regions to manage their environmental impact.
  • In 2023, Chiesi received an overall score of A- on the climate change questionnaire.
  • Chiesi was included in the “Climate Change A List” by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in 2022 for its commitment to climate action and transparency – recognition obtained only by 2% of the 15,000 companies that submitted data.
  • Chiesi is proud to disclose our progress annually.
• B Corp Climate Collective (BCCC), committing to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) “Race to Zero”. This global campaign aims to encourage leadership and support from businesses, cities, regions and investors towards creating a greener future.
• Chair of the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) SUSTAIN (Sustainability Members) Working Group which is leading the pharmaceutical industries response to reduce the environmental impact of medicines, supporting the NHS and UK Government to achieve its Net Zero commitments.