AstraZeneca (AZN) is teaming with Vanguard Renewables in a first-of-its-kind agreement to deliver renewable natural gas (RNG) to all of its sites in the United States by the end of 2026.
AstraZeneca will begin purchasing RNG produced by Vanguard Renewables in June 2023 for its Newark Campus in Delaware, where the company processes 26 pharmaceuticals for distribution throughout the United States and manufactures medicine formulations for global supply. By 2026, this agreement will allow AstraZeneca’s U.S. locations to use up to 650,000 million British thermal units (MMBtu), or 190,500 megawatt hours (MWh), of RNG every year, comparable to the energy required to heat more than 17,800 U.S. homes for a year.
“We recognise the interconnection between the health of people and the health of the planet, and we are committed to driving deep decarbonization across our operations and value chain,” said Pam Cheng, Executive Vice President of Global Operations & IT and Chief Sustainability Officer at AstraZeneca. In the United States, our creative cooperation with Vanguard Renewables exemplifies how we are partnering at scale to produce sustainable science and medicines as part of the transition to net zero health systems and a circular economy.”
Vanguard Renewables
Vanguard Renewables’ Farm Powered® method will be used in this arrangement, allowing Vanguard Renewables to collaborate with dairy farmers, food and beverage manufacturers, retailers, and distributors to produce RNG using farm-based anaerobic digestion (AD) from food and dairy cow waste. Once the RNG has been produced and captured using AD, it will be fed into existing natural gas infrastructure for use in AstraZeneca’s pharmaceutical research and manufacturing activities.
AstraZeneca will have access to high-quality RNG from three on-farm anaerobic digester plants in the United States for the next 15 years or more through a partnership with Vanguard Renewables.
This alliance will use food and beverage waste from the manufacturing sector, as well as cow dung from local and family-owned farms, to benefit rural areas across the United States. This collaboration decreases pollution from the farming sector by trapping methane from dairy operations that would otherwise have ended up in the atmosphere.
Vanguard Renewables’ Chief Strategy Officer, John Hanselman, stated, “We have been working with multi-generational farms and food and beverage manufacturers since 2014 to provide sustainable solutions to greenhouse gas emissions challenges by diverting food waste from landfills and sequestering on-farm emissions.” Vanguard’s Farm Powered approach gives additional revenue streams to farmers across the United States, promotes regenerative agriculture practices, and helps to ensure that these farms will continue to operate for years to come – all thanks to Vanguard.
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