AstraZeneca announces innovative partnership with Vanguard Renewables to decarbonize its United States sites
13 Juni 2023 - 1:00PM
Business Wire
- Agreement will deliver renewable natural gas to U.S.
research and manufacturing sites, starting in Newark, Delaware, and
accelerate progress on global emissions reduction targets
- New partnership leverages food and agricultural
waste to power sites, contributing to the circular
economy
In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, AstraZeneca (AZN) is
partnering with Vanguard Renewables to enable the delivery of
renewable natural gas (RNG) to all of its sites in the United
States by the end of 2026.
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Goodrich Farm in Salisbury, VT food waste
and manure to RNG - Photo by Todd Balfour
From June 2023, AstraZeneca will begin purchasing RNG produced
by Vanguard Renewables for its Newark Campus in Delaware, where the
Company packages 26 medicines for distribution across the U.S. and
makes medicine formulations for global supply. By 2026, this
collaboration will enable as much as 650,000 million British
thermal units (MMBtu), or 190,500 megawatt hours (MWh) per year, of
RNG to be used across AstraZeneca’s U.S. sites, equivalent to the
energy required to heat more than 17,800 U.S. homes for a year.
Pam Cheng, Executive Vice President of Global Operations &
IT and Chief Sustainability Officer at AstraZeneca, said: “We
recognize the interconnection between the health of people and the
planet, and are committed to driving deep decarbonization across
our operations and value chain. Our innovative partnership with
Vanguard Renewables in the U.S. is an illustration of how we are
collaborating at scale to deliver sustainable science and
medicines, as part of the transition to net zero health systems and
a circular economy.”
AstraZeneca is taking a science-led, patient-centric approach to
deliver improved health outcomes with a lower environmental
footprint. As heat and power are critical to the manufacture of
medicines, the decarbonization of healthcare requires access to
clean sources of heat, such as RNG. This new partnership with
Vanguard Renewables is an important milestone in delivering
emissions reductions in line with AstraZeneca’s flagship Ambition
Zero Carbon program. The Company is on track to reduce greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions from its global operations (Scope 1 and 2) by
98% by 2026 from a 2015 baseline, and by 2030, AstraZeneca aims to
halve its entire value chain footprint on the way to becoming
science-based net zero by 2045 at the latest. The use of RNG at
AstraZeneca sites in the U.S. will further enable the company’s
transition to 100 percent renewable energy for heat and power.
This agreement will utilize Vanguard Renewables Farm Powered®
process, allowing Vanguard Renewables to work with dairy farmers
and food and beverage manufacturers, retailers and distributors to
produce RNG using farm-based anaerobic digestion (AD) from food and
dairy cow manure. Once the RNG is produced and captured through AD,
it will be injected into existing natural gas infrastructure for
use in AstraZeneca medicines research and manufacturing
processes.
Through the partnership with Vanguard Renewables, AstraZeneca
will access high quality RNG from three on-farm anaerobic digester
facilities across the U.S. for the next 15 years or more.
Neil H. Smith, Chief Executive Officer at Vanguard Renewables
stated: “Vanguard Renewables is excited to be partnering with
AstraZeneca on this transformative business-to-business clean
energy solution. AstraZeneca has set a very ambitious and
challenging net zero target, which is a benchmark for their sector
and other global corporations. We strongly believe this partnership
will provide a path for other like-minded companies to join us on
the journey towards global decarbonization.”
This collaboration will utilize food and waste from local and
family-owned farms, supporting rural communities across the U.S. By
capturing methane from dairy operations that would have otherwise
ended up in the atmosphere, this partnership also reduces pollution
from the farming sector. Vanguard Renewables has been working with
multi-generational dairy farms and food and beverage manufacturers
since 2014, providing sustainable solutions to greenhouse gas
emissions challenges by diverting food waste from landfills and
sequestering on-farm emissions. Vanguard’s Farm Powered process
provides dairy farmers across the U.S. with an additional revenue
stream via land lease, supports regenerative agriculture practices,
and helps to ensure that these farms will be operating for years to
come.
Notes:
Anaerobic Digestion
Inedible or unsaleable food and beverage waste from the
manufacturing and retail sectors is collected, sorted, depackaged
on-site, and combined with dairy farm manure in a sealed
biodigester tank. Once combined in the biodigester, microorganisms
that naturally occur in manure digest the waste, converting sugars,
fats and other compounds into biogas. Harnessing the waste’s energy
captures as much as 95 percent of the potential greenhouse gas
emissions that would result if food and beverage waste were sent to
a landfill or if the farm manure were field-applied. The process
produces biogas that is upgraded to pipeline-quality RNG and
injected into the existing pipeline infrastructure on-site,
displacing traditional fossil fuels. The RNG is then used for
heating and cooling or can be used to make Compressed Natural Gas
(CNG) for vehicles. The by-products of the anaerobic digestion
process include a low-carbon and nutrient dense fertilizer
(digestate) that reduces the farm’s dependency on chemical
fertilizers, and a dry by-product which is used for animal bedding.
When food and beverage manufacturers send their organic waste to a
Farm Powered site and purchase the RNG created by their waste to
power their plants, they are creating a closed-loop solution that
helps to address Scope 1 and 3 emissions in their business
practices.
About AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca is a global, science-led biopharmaceutical company
that focuses on the discovery, development and commercialization of
prescription medicines in Oncology, Rare Diseases and
BioPharmaceuticals, including Cardiovascular, Renal &
Metabolism, and Respiratory & Immunology. Based in Cambridge,
UK, AstraZeneca operates in over 100 countries, and its innovative
medicines are used by millions of patients worldwide. For more
information, please visit www.astrazeneca-us.com and follow us on
Twitter @AstraZenecaUS.
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