Pfizer are the world’s largest research-based pharmaceuticals company with operations in over 150 countries. Pfizer Ecuador initiated a Carbono Zero project in 2011, the aim of which was to carry out an assessment of their organisational carbon footprint and use the results of that assessment to identify areas where they could reduce their emissions and then invest in a carbon reduction project in Ecuador to cover their remaining emissions.

The Solution

Pfizer Ecuador chose Carbon Masters to assist them on this project based on their deep carbon domain expertise and their industry leading carbon accounting software platform Carbon Guru for Organisations. Carbon Guru is a robust carbon-accounting tool which enables the accurate calculation of carbon footprint data across an organization from a variety of emission sources and from various different sites.

What we did

Ecuador is a developing country with no current regulatory requirements for companies to measure let alone reduce their Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, so unsurprisingly Pfizer Ecuador were fairly new to the area of carbon measurement and carbon management.

Carbon Masters agreed the boundary and scope of the annual carbon footprint assessment with Pfizer management and then configured the Carbon Guru software to their specific requirements. We then trained their personnel on our carbon footprinting approach and on how to use the Carbon Guru platform and assisted them with the initial data collection process.

After Carbon Masters’ on-site visit in Ecuador, Pfizer employees began to enter the data directly into the Carbon Guru platform with remote assistance from Carbon Masters analysts. The software was used in Spanish by the majority of Pfizer employees which made the data entry process easier. Emissions factors specific to the Ecuadorian context were used to make the carbon footprint calculations more accurate.

For areas where data was incomplete, Carbon Masters helped to provide reasonable estimates – for example, emissions from business travel by taxi were estimated based on the average expenditure per taxi km in Ecuador. This helped the organisation to gain a more comprehensive picture of their overall carbon footprint.

Results

Once the carbon footprint assessment was complete, Carbon Masters provided a bespoke carbon footprint report which Pfizer Ecuador shared with their stakeholders both internally and externally. The report identified business travel and fuel consumption in their sales force cars as two areas of high carbon intensity and costs. As a result of this project Pfizer Ecuador are currently exploring their options for a carbon offsetting project in Ecuador, as well as identifying opportunities to reduce their own emissions in the two areas identified.