landscape of trees with the see in the background

Novartis is committed to using resources efficiently and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which affect the climate. Our ambition is to make the company both energy and climate resilient.

2025

Become carbon neutral in our own operations (Scopes 1 and 2)¹

2030

Become carbon neutral across our value chain (Scopes 1, 2 and 3)

2040

Achieve net-zero carbon emissions across our value chain²

Our strategy is consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Within the scope of this commitment, we have joined the Business Ambition for 1.5°C and have also become part of Race to Zero, the UN-backed campaign led by the High-Level Champions for Climate Action. We are committed to achieving net zero by 2040 and have submitted and are in the process of validating our net-zero target and an update near-term target for 2030, in accordance with the latest SBTi Net-Zero standard. We expect to have validated targets in 2024.

We are a signatory of The Climate Pledge and a member of RE100, to help accelerate progress toward 100% renewable electricity, and EV100, helping drive the transition to electric vehicles.

Our first priority is to reduce our demand for energy, and we have a longstanding, comprehensive energy and climate program, which aims to improve energy efficiency for all industrial and commercial operations. This program helps ensure that all major sites are routinely assessed, and investments in energy efficiency are prioritized based on forecast energy savings.

Novartis has set an internal carbon price of USD 100 per ton (t) of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e). This is used to determine the financial impact of climate emissions from significant investments. Building a carbon price into investment decisions is important because it helps us to take potential impacts on climate into account, and it is more effective to build in energy efficiency from the beginning than to redesign an existing system.

We are also making investments to decarbonize the energy we need by using renewable energy sources where available and feasible.

Windfarm

In 2017, we struck our first major wind power deal, allowing us to neutralize the carbon footprint for all the electricity bought for our operations in the United States and Canada. In 2020, we signed five virtual power purchase agreements to help us achieve 100% renewable electricity in our European operations.

Cars on a highway

In order to achieve our carbon neutrality targets, we are in the process of greening our car fleet.

landscape of a harbour

Working together with our suppliers around the world, we are taking steps to decarbonize our supply chain.

In addition, we have started to assess how climate change will affect facilities and are taking actions to improve our climate resilience and make our facilities less susceptible to extreme weather events.

To achieve our 2030 climate target, we need to engage with our suppliers. We have identified the climate hot spots in our value chain and have started to work with our suppliers to address these. In addition, we published the Novartis Environmental Sustainability Criteria for Suppliers (PDF 0.3 MB), to formally communicate our Environmental Sustainability Strategy to our third-party suppliers, setting out clear objectives and deliverables, as well as details on monitoring progress.

We have also begun to investigate the carbon footprint of our key products to identify the steps we can take to minimize it. For example, we have completed lifecycle assessment studies of two BREEZHALER® inhaled products.

  1. Scopes 1 and 2 from energy
  2. In accordance with Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) Corporate Net-Zero Standard