The Confidence to Rise to Any Challenge: Pfizer’s 2021 ESG Report
March 17, 2022
In 2021, Pfizer’s scientific breakthroughs made a positive impact on an estimated 1.4 billion patients – roughly 1 out of every 6 people on Earth.* But the company’s commitment to addressing patients’ needs extends beyond discovering, developing and delivering medicines and vaccines.
Pfizer is integrating environmental, social and governance issues into core business practices and is seeking to make a measurable impact in key areas – from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, to ensuring diverse and inclusive representation at every level of the company, to acting with integrity in every decision it makes and everything it does.
The company’s progress is reflected in the 2021 Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) Report.
Read Pfizer’s 2021 ESG Report here.
The report shows a company with the confidence, as Chairman and CEO Dr. Albert Bourla has said, to rise to any challenge, just as it has in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.
ESG Priorities at the Core of Pfizer
Pfizer is a fundamentally different company than it was two years ago.
“By applying the lessons learned from our work to develop a COVID-19 vaccine and oral treatment, and by further embedding Environmental, Social & Governance principles into our core operations, we have transformed the way we discover, develop, finance, and deliver breakthroughs that change patients’ lives,” Dr. Bourla said.
Pfizer’s ESG priorities focus on the importance of product innovation and product quality and safety, coupled with the imperative to help ensure equitable access and affordability. That’s why, for example, the company has pledged to deliver 2 billion doses of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2022 – having met the goal of delivering the first 1 billion by the end of 2021. This total includes 1 billion doses being provided to the U.S. at a not-for-profit price that the government is, in turn, donating to Africa and other low and lower-middle income countries.
ESG is part of everyone’s job at Pfizer, so the company also underscores diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and business ethics as strategic priorities for its 79,000-strong workforce.
Finally, the company continues to make progress on its environmental sustainability journey with a focus on climate action. In 2021, Pfizer delivered a seven percent reduction in Scope 1 & 2 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions compared to the 2019 baseline and entered into a 15-year virtual power purchase agreement that will deliver Pfizer’s North American purchased electricity demand through solar energy beginning in 2023. Additionally, Pfizer took steps to progress its Value Chain (Scope 3) emissions reductions by engaging its supply chain partners and requesting they evaluate their GHG baseline and set science-based emission reduction targets.
Work to be Done
Pfizer made considerable progress towards achieving its ESG objectives in 2021 and more work remains. The company has publicly committed to measurable goals, such as a target of reducing scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 46% from a baseline set in 2019 by the end of this decade.
The company is also looking to create opportunity parity in its global workforce, so that the percentage of Vice President and higher roles held by women (globally) would reach 47% by 2025.
Pfizer has also been recognized as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies, according to Ethisphere, a leader in defining standards for ethical business. The commitment to good governance extends to multiple areas, from promoting supply chain transparency to striving to ensure quality and integrity of clinical trials.
The goals are wide-ranging and comprehensive, but the company remains resolute in its commitment to deliver the breakthroughs necessary to achieve them. For 2022, performance on ESG goals will be linked to executive compensation to help drive the behavior and culture changes required to achieve Pfizer’s ambitious and sustainable endeavors. These changes to the company’s compensation program will impact over 30,000 employees globally.
“As we tackle future threats to the health of people and our planet, I am confident that incredible things can happen when people come together to address a problem,” said Dr. Bourla.
* Patient counts are estimates based on multiple data sources