In a new seven-year agreement with energy supplier AGL, CSL will match 100% of the electricity used by its Australian manufacturing sites with renewable energy certificates.
The certificates are a strategy for increasing demand for renewable energy and providing funds to increase the future capacity of renewable energy generators. Initially, AGL will provide large-scale generation certificates generated from the Macarthur Wind Farm, located within CSL’s home state of Victoria, where CSL has two large-scale, advanced manufacturing facilities servicing patient and public health needs in Australia and the world.
"Every organization's sustainability journey has big and small steps. This power purchase agreement is a big step for CSL in implementing one of our key strategic levers, renewable electricity, to help drive our enterprise-wide Scope 1 and 2 emission reductions," CSL’s Chief Sustainability Officer Jeffrey Ball said.
Scope 1 and 2 emissions come from the company’s own facilities or equipment, such as boilers, furnaces and vehicles, and the emissions created in the production of the power purchased to run CSL’s operations.
In 2022, the company announced that it intends to cut 40% of its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions against a baseline of the average annual emissions during the fiscal years 2019 through 2021. With the addition of the AGL agreement, beginning in January 2025, CSL will reduce its global Scope 1 and 2 emissions by approximately 23% from that emissions baseline.
CSL’s European manufacturing sites have been using 100% renewable purchased electricity since January 2023.
“These are important milestones that signal CSL's commitment and action to improve its environmental profile, and we will continue to explore similar opportunities throughout our global footprint," Ball said.
With locations around the world, CSL includes business units CSL Behring, which makes medicines for people who have rare and serious diseases; CSL Seqirus, which develops and manufactures vaccines; and CSL Vifor, a leader in iron deficiency and nephrology (kidney care). CSL also operates CSL Plasma, one of the largest collectors of donated human plasma used to make medicines for diseases such as hemophilia and primary immune deficiency.
CSL is focusing on integrating sustainability into business decisions, reducing carbon emissions, minimizing end-to-end production of waste through removal, reduction and recycling and is supporting similar efforts throughout its supply chain. In June 2023, CSL committed to seeking validation of its near-term company-wide emissions reduction in line with climate science with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).
