Working together on a net-zero future in healthcare

We hold ourselves to high environmental standards, setting long-term science-based targets to reduce our environmental footprint while also working with partners to make system-level progress. We are committed to reducing emissions within our value chain to reach net zero across all our emission scopes no later than 2045.

In 2023 Roche joined the Sustainable Markets Initiative(SMI) Health Systems Task Force to align with peers on decarbonising healthcare supply chains and patient care pathways and delivering digital solutions for sustainable clinical research. These three focus areas cover over 90% of Roche’s carbon footprint.

“To decarbonise healthcare, we need to drive action at scale. We are working together with our peers to accelerate the transition towards a more sustainable healthcare system”, says Severin Schwan, Chairman of Roche

Building on a 2023 open lettersetting joint minimal climate and sustainability targets for suppliers, Roche and six other pharmaceutical companies updated these targets in November 2025to meet rising industry expectations for emissions reduction across the value chain. Collectively, the task force members have engaged with 200+ suppliers to promote these targets. This sends a clear signal to the market that we are aligned in accelerating our efforts towards a shared goal: delivering sustainable health care for a better tomorrow. At Roche, we are intensifying our conversations with our key suppliers to collaborate on driving this change.

Roche and ten other pharmaceutical companies, as part of the Pharma LCA Consortium, have come together with the British Standards Institute to develop PAS 2090, an industry-first common framework and harmonised rules for product life cycle assessments (LCAs). The standard was released in November 2025, providing a harmonized methodology for the LCA of pharmaceutical products. Thanks to this new standard, the assessment of the environmental impact of pharmaceutical products will be conducted in a transparent, consistent way across our industry. To simplify the adoption of the standard by all stakeholders, the Pharma LCA Consortium has released a technical guidance document to support its application, and is working on further resources (data, tools, training) to assure its operability.

Roche is also investing in digital innovation to reduce clinical trial emissions, primarily by collaborating with the Sustainable Healthcare Coalition (SHC) on the Industry Low Carbon Clinical Trials (iLCCT) initiative. This cross-pharma group developed and launched the Clinical Trial Carbon Footprint Calculator, a standard methodology and emission measurement tool.

The calculator enables clinical development groups to better understand the impact of design and execution decisions on a trial’s carbon footprint. The iLCCT has successfully engaged CRO partners and suppliers on the shared emissions reporting requirement, and in 2026, the initiative will focus on identifying and developing best practices for using digital solutions to further reduce clinical trial emissions.

Using this tool, Roche will report total emissions per trial for all Phase 2 and 3 clinical trials starting in 2025 or later, fulfilling our COP27 commitment. In 2026, Roche will start to use our calculated clinical trial emission footprints to identify emission hotspots and implement and measure specific emission reduction efforts as part of our broader clinical trial decarbonization journey (e.g. reduction of clinical trial IMP and lab kit wastage).