Climate and environmental matters have an impact on people’s health. Protecting the environment and contributing to mitigate climate change is therefore part of our approach to positively impact patients’ health and well-being.

We continuously review and improve our measures related to environmental topics as well as develop new actions. This way, we ensure keeping ourselves up to date with the dynamic nature of climate change. Furthermore, we remain ambitious towards implementing innovative and effective measures for sustainable operations.

Evotec commits itself to climate action and as it is embedded in our corporate DNA, we strive for excellence. This is why we are signatory of the most ambitious action related to climate change mitigation, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Evotec submitted its set of near-term carbon reduction targets aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement: to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C. 

Targets submitted and pending for review and approval are:

1. To reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 50% until 2032 from a 2021 base year, which is consistent with 1.5°C emissions scenarios.
2. To increase the annual sourcing of renewable electricity from 25% in the base year to 100% by 2026.
3. To reduce Scope 3 GHG emissions from purchased goods and services as well as capital goods by 72% per revenue over the same period. We also commit that 80% of our suppliers of purchased goods and services and capital goods will have science based emissions targets by 2027.

We are one of about 4,140 companies (as of December 2022) taking action currently and as one of about 2,068 committed to the 1.5° target and determined to become net carbon neutral by 2050 at the latest. To find out more about the initiative, visit their website.

In 2022, we performed a comprehensive analysis to both develop our near-term targets and to build our GHG inventory in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard. Base year was determined as 2021.

With regard to operational environmental protection, especially in the field of water and waste management, we consider the necessity to track and reduce our impact to be material. Group-wide, reporting structures are still in early stages and limited data is available. We continuously focus on improving data quality, which will facilitate the same unbiased, data-driven decision-making that we pursue in all areas of our business.

As a fast-growing company, we have started using a web-based platform to collect environmental data that is relevant for management of resources in a responsible and verifiable manner. After additional improvements in data collection processes are made, this data will support our efforts to identify sustainability-related risks at an early stage and derive appropriate measures. In this way, the large number of projects that we have already implemented in the area of environmental protection and resource conservation can also be systematically mapped in the future.

On the other hand, energy data has seen a significant advancement in terms of quality, completeness and verifiability.