A new analysis by Travel Smart, a campaign led by Transport & Environment, has found that the business travel emissions of eleven of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies dropped by an average of 21% in 2023 compared to 2019. This reduction could have been as large as -44% if the two pharmaceutical companies flying the most, Johnson & Johnson and Merck, had halved their emissions. Instead, Johnson & Johnson only reduced them by 10% and Merck increased them by 29%.
Sustained business flying reductions can only be ensured through targets. Out of the eleven companies analysed, only four have set a business travel target. Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Novo Nordisk have dropped their emissions by 55%, 52% and 52% respectively. The fourth company with a target, Roche, reduced them by 44%.
However, most pharmaceutical companies haven’t committed to business flying reductions yet, and as a result of that in 2023, the travel emissions of those without targets started to creep back towards pre-covid levels. This includes UCB, Novartis, Bayer and Sanofi. Grifols did reduce its emissions last year, but there is no guarantee that this trend will continue as it hasn’t set a target.
Global pharmaceutical companies have a high responsibility to reduce business travel emissions, as they are seen as leaders in innovation due to their essential role in the context of health pandemics, and in light of increasing attention to the serious health risks from plane pollution to millions of people living around airports.
This analysis is the third of its kind the Travel Smart Campaign publishes. In July, Travel Smart found that business travel emissions of global consultancies were down by 46% compared to 2019 levels. In September, the campaign also revealed that technology companies had dropped their emissions by 49%. But the consulting sector is much more advanced when it comes to setting business travel reduction targets. 12 out of the 15 consultancies analysed had set a business flying objective, whereas only 7 in 26 tech companies have done so.
However, both sectors have a common factor: top flyers without targets [1]. Neither Accenture nor KPMG International among the consultancies nor Alphabet (parent company of Google) and Microsoft in the tech sector have ensured a sustained reduction of their emissions by setting targets. And that is again the case in the pharmaceutical sector, with the novelty that Johnson & Johnson and Merck are actually making the whole sector lag behind in business flying reduction because of their outsized flying.
“Top flyers should be leading by example, not watering down efforts to reduce business flying. What we’re seeing in the pharmaceutical sector is an extreme case of large polluters hampering the sector’s progress towards flying less, but we’ve seen that story some other times. Johnson and Johnson, Merck and other large polluters must put limits on their flying, and they must do it now”, Denise Auclair, head of the Travel Smart campaign at T&E, explains.
Notes to editor
[1] The Travel Smart yearly ranking analyses how the largest companies across the world are performing on commitments to reduce corporate air travel emissions. The 25 businesses with more emissions that haven’t set a target yet are included in the “top flyers” group.