Zero-emission in practice – emission reduction and energy optimization in pharmaceuticals

The client – a global pharmaceutical producer – was looking for real ways to reduce the energy intensity of its plants in Europe and to define a pathway to full zero-emission.

Key challenges we faced:

• lack of a comprehensive action map leading to climate neutrality,
• high consumption of thermal energy and natural gas,
• infrastructure modernizations carried out fragmentarily, without optimal sequencing and synergy effects,
• the need to reconcile corporate requirements (100% emission reduction) with profitability of actions.

The first step of our cooperation was formulating the key problems and assumptions related to a plant located in Ireland. The company’s goal was, among others, to develop a CO₂ reduction map leading to the plant’s zero-emission and to reduce production energy intensity. Thanks to the collaboration of local engineers and DB Energy engineers, we defined a modernization path for the plant’s infrastructure. Later, it served as a map on the road to zero-emission. We also received information that the energy efficiency team operating within the client’s organization assessed the potential energy savings of the Irish plant at about 7%. This turned out to be a significant underestimation. Just one of the proposed modernizations saved about 12 GWh of thermal energy annually – about ¼ of the plant’s entire consumption.

Project implementation

One of the issues at the client’s plant was implementing modernizations in different parts of the facility that were not always aligned with efficiency. From our experience, in many cases plants attempt to modernize infrastructure but avoid optimization in production processes. Sometimes, due to the lack of a proper strategy, actions may reduce consumption in one place while offsetting it in another.

Road to climate neutrality

At the client’s facility in Ireland, we planned a detailed roadmap that indicated the optimal sequence of implementing actions in terms of achieved energy savings, CO₂ emission reductions, and required costs:

After implementing the investment plan aimed at reducing emissions and energy demand, we identified further steps to electrify the plant and green its energy sources. The key investment, from both energy and technological perspectives, was the modernization of the incinerator to allow the combustion of both saline and non-saline waste, along with the construction of a waste heat boiler in this system.

The idea of modernizing the incinerator resulted from audit findings and on-site work at the client’s plant, allowing heat recovery from combustion processes. This modernization falls within the first stage of the zero-emission strategy and is one of many steps the plant must take to achieve 100% net greenhouse gas emission reduction. Thanks to a flexible approach to investment, we can achieve better results and tailor solutions to the client’s needs.

Thanks to just one modernization, annual CO₂ emissions decreased by as much as 2,172 tons. This is equivalent to driving around the world by car 400 times.

• A zero-emission strategy requires a systemic approach – individual modernizations, without a coherent action map, bring only short-term effects.
• Actual savings can be greater than the client’s estimates – our analyses showed potential 3–4 times higher than internal assessments.
• Heat recovery and modernization of key processes (e.g., incinerator) are high-return investments bringing both environmental and economic benefits.
• Zero-emission in the pharmaceutical industry is possible – but it requires integration of actions at the corporate scale and cooperation with a technical-strategic partner.

This investment was important not only due to the reduction of CO₂ emissions but also due to natural gas savings. Before modernization, the client used the main incinerator for non-saline waste and the second (reserve) incinerator for saline waste. Thanks to our investment, the main incinerator can now burn both waste types. The second incinerator will serve as an emergency unit, used only during overhauls or maintenance of the main one, which consequently leads to savings in natural gas consumption and related costs.

The corporation commissioning the investment is a major player in the pharmaceutical market. It has branches worldwide and employs over 1,100 people in Ireland alone. The main area of activity of the facility is the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API: Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients).