Takeda Achieved Carbon Neutrality in 2020
- Demonstrates its Commitment to Environmental Leadership
- Focus on Energy Conservation, Renewable Energy and Carbon Offsets
- Achievement Represents a Significant Milestone in the Company’s Commitment to Become Carbon Zero in its Operations by 2040
OSAKA, Japan: Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (TSE:4502/NYSE:TAK) (“Takeda”) today announced that it achieved carbon neutrality in its value chain for its fiscal year 2019. This achievement was delivered by a continued focus on internal energy conservation measures, procurement of green energy, and investment in renewable energy certificates and high-quality, verified carbon offsets. These actions collectively address 100 percent of Takeda’s fiscal year 2019 scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions1 and represent a significant milestone in Takeda’s sustainability journey.
“This important milestone underscores our commitment to environmental sustainability as we recognize that climate change poses a risk to human health, including the spread of some of the same infectious diseases we’re working to eradicate,” said Christophe Weber, Takeda president and chief executive officer. “As a global, purpose-driven company celebrating our 240-year anniversary this summer, I am proud of our achievement, but we know much more work needs to be done. We remain committed to using our size and scale to help mitigate climate change and to ensure we can continue to make a positive impact on patients, our people and the planet.”
One of the ways Takeda achieved this milestone is through its investment in more than 30 renewable energy and carbon offset projects across 12 countries. These projects support the use of wind and solar energy, clean water availability, forest conservation and the preservation of biodiversity. The activities collectively address 15 out of 17 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. They support local communities, while promoting a more sustainable future. All carbon offsets were required to meet rigorous evaluation criteria, including additionality, measurability, transparency, registration and third-party verification, among others.
Projects supported include:
- Clean drinking water in Malawi – providing safe drinking water to communities by creating new boreholes and repairing damaged ones, resulting in the reduced use of firewood for boiling and purifying water
- Working Woodlands Program – preserving more than 8,600 acres in the northeastern corner of Tennessee, U.S., as a privately held park, encouraging recreation-based tourism in a lower-income region of the United States
- Forest management in Japan – supporting natural carbon sinks and local air quality through sustainable forestry management practices in Japan
- Solar cookstoves in China – helping to improve indoor air quality by investing in the installation of solar cookers to replace coal for cooking and hot water needs for rural farmers in remote areas of China
- Solar energy in India – supporting the development of solar lighting and thermal water heating to replace fossil fuel usage throughout different states in India
Building on today’s milestone, Takeda remains committed to eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from its company-wide operations. Specifically, Takeda aims to reduce 40 percent of its emissions from its operations by 2025 and has committed to being carbon zero by 2040. To achieve its climate-related goals, a company-wide, cross-divisional program has been established to increase renewable energy usage and drive energy efficiency. Takeda is also looking beyond its own operations and is working with suppliers to help them to establish science-based reduction targets and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
As a science-driven organization, Takeda’s climate change commitments are aligned with current climate science. In 2020, the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) recognized Takeda’s goals as being consistent with reductions required to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Takeda is also proud to have earned a spot on CDP’s ‘A List’ for climate change leadership in 2020 as well as being named to Corporate Knights Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World (Global 100) for the sixth consecutive year.