Amgen Ecovation®: How Amgen Builds Sustainability Into Biotech

Sustainability isn't a standalone initiative at Amgen. From reducing energy and water use across processes to reducing the scale and cost of making medicines, Amgen's commitment to environmental sustainability is embedded into the company's operations from the outset.

One of the most ambitious environmental commitments in the company's history was made nearly seven years ago: By 2027, the company would achieve carbon neutrality for Amgen-owned and operated facilities and operations while also reducing water use by 40% and waste disposal by 75% (from a 2019 baseline).¹

"Sustainability is increasingly becoming part of the operational blueprint rather than an add-on," says Jim Fisher, senior director of Engineering for Environmental Sustainability at Amgen. "We don't want to execute projects driven only by sustainability; we want sustainability built into every project."

The idea eventually became a philosophy that Amgen now refers to as "Amgen Ecovation^®." Instead of treating sustainability as a separate initiative, teams started building it into project planning from the beginning.

"Amgen Ecovation^® means embedding sustainability into the way we design facilities, manufacture medicines and invest in new technologies," says Sam Guhan, senior vice president of Global Engineering at Amgen. "It helps us improve efficiency, strengthen operational resilience and reduce environmental impact while continuing to deliver a reliable supply of high-quality medicines for patients around the world."

For Aun Hasnain, senior manager in Engineering, Amgen Ecovation^® fundamentally changes how teams think about new systems and facilities. Every major capital project now undergoes a sustainability assessment alongside traditional engineering and financial evaluation.

"Whatever we're going to design, whatever we're going to invent, we look to use less water, produce less waste, and have a smaller carbon footprint than what we've done before," Hasnain says.

Solutions to Water Conservation

Water quickly became a key focus in the program. "When we started, we only had about 400,000 cubic meters of water reduction projects identified," Fisher says. "The target was 858,500."

Water conservation efforts spanned everything from small measures like replacing faucet aerators and leak detection, to large ones like redesigning water purification and biomanufacturing processes to use less water.

Amgen also established water recycling capabilities within its manufacturing sites, and the construction of a water reclamation facility at the company's global headquarters in Thousand Oaks, Calif., is among its most ambitious of such projects to date.

The facility will capture relatively clean wastewater streams generated during operations, purify them, and convert them into reusable industrial water for systems like cooling towers.

"It will account for 20 to 25 percent of Amgen's global water savings," says Hasnain. The project is expected to begin operation this fall.

Beyond reducing water consumption, the system also improves long-term resilience in drought-prone Southern California.

"This project does both," Fisher explains. "It secures our compliance with local government for the foreseeable future and delivers a tremendous amount of water conservation."

The Path to Energy Efficiency

Another major focus has been energy infrastructure at Amgen's largest manufacturing site, in Juncos, Puerto Rico. Historically, the local electrical grid in Puerto Rico has been heavily dependent on fossil fuels. To reduce emissions and improve reliability, Amgen deployed a cogeneration facility that produces electricity onsite with a smaller carbon footprint than the Puerto Rican grid.

Amgen has also reduced electricity use across its offices, laboratories and manufacturing facilities through a combination of smarter building operations, energy-efficient equipment and next-generation design. Efforts have included upgrading HVAC and cooling systems, converting buildings to LED lighting, adding solar power and improving automation and digital controls.

At new sites, like those recently opened in Ohio and North Carolina, Amgen has constructed the facilities from the ground up with efficiency in mind, including building for LEED Gold^® certification at both sites, achieving ENERGY STAR^®-certified operations in Ohio and using advanced technologies to improve energy efficiency and output and economic cost-savings.

Amgen also invested in large-scale solar installations at these new sites, intended to reduce the use of traditional grid electricity. Amgen's Ohio site has already become the company's first fully electric manufacturing facility. These are large-scale projects that require extensive coordination with local utilities and grid operators.

Planning for the Future

While Amgen's 2027 environmental goals remain the company's immediate focus, much of Amgen's environmental sustainability team is already planning for what comes next.

For Kelly Clark, a principal engineer on the Environmental Sustainability team, future-focused work is becoming central to the conversation. Before joining Amgen, Clark was an environmental attorney.

"I always felt like I was coming into problems too late," Clark says of her legal career. "You could stop the pollution, but the damage had already been happening for years. Sustainability gave me the chance to work upstream instead."

At Amgen, her role focuses on future decarbonization strategy, climate risk assessment, renewable energy procurement and carbon offsets. "We're investigating what happens after 2027," Clark says. "What would full decarbonization require? Could we fundamentally change how our sites operate?"

Those questions are significantly more complex than simply purchasing renewable electricity or offsets.

Hasnain says many of the next-generation sustainability projects will focus less on straightforward conservation and more on large-scale infrastructure transition. That could include large-scale electrification of facilities, securing renewable electricity or incorporating renewable fuels.

Balancing Sustainability and Operations

At the same time, Clark emphasizes that sustainability decisions inside a biotech company cannot happen in isolation from the company's larger mission.

"Everything comes back to serving patients," she says. "You can't simply choose one path forward if it interferes with medicine production or operational reliability."

That balancing act has made collaboration essential and reflects the Amgen Ecovation^® philosophy at its best, where economic, efficiency and sustainability benefits are all embedded into Amgen's operations and its culture.

This work spans engineering calculations, infrastructure retrofits, renewable energy contracts, water systems, regulatory planning and climate modeling. Much of it happens quietly, bringing together engineers, scientists, Operations teams and sustainability leaders making long-term infrastructure decisions that can shape how the company operates for decades to come.

Footnote

1. Reductions in waste and water take into account only verified reduction projects and do not take into account changes associated with the contraction or expansion of the Company.