Towards 2045 with The ACS GCI Pharma Roundtable: A Roadmap for Sustainable Medicines

The ACS Green Chemistry Institute® (GCI) Pharmaceutical Roundtable is a unique, long—standing collaboration—now in its third decade—uniting the global pharmaceutical industry to advance green chemistry and engineering innovation. Recognizing the intrinsic link between human and environmental health, the Roundtable envisions a future in which lifechanging medicines are manufactured in harmony with the planet.
Over the past two years, the Roundtable has undertaken the development of a comprehensive roadmap outlining a pathway to achieving net—zero Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) manufacturing while reducing other hazards to human health and the environment within the next two decades. This presentation will provide an overview of the strategy, framework, and implementation plan for this roadmap. The resulting guidance is intended to support the Roundtable in prioritizing its efforts, assist member companies in aligning sustainability strategies, and inform the broader green chemistry and engineering community of industry needs and collaboration opportunities.

Achieving net zero API manufacturing by 2045 will require a new generation of practical, science-based tools that empower rapid, data-driven sustainability decisions across the pharmaceutical value chain. As part of the ACS GCIPR API Strategy Roadmap, we identified the critical tool gaps limiting wider adoption of green chemistry – including the need for integrated metrics platforms (PMI-LCA and iGAL), predictive eco-design and feedstock selection tools, improved digital decision support frameworks, and harmonized data standards. This presentation outlines the priority tools needed to evaluate, benchmark, and optimize greener API synthetic routes, and enable circularity. The resulting roadmap defines a practical, industry-aligned pathway for equipping chemists and engineers with the capabilities required to design and manufacture more sustainable APIs at scale.

This presentation summarizes the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable’s roadmap initiative to improve circularity and use of renewable chemicals in pharmaceutical manufacturing over the next 20 years.
Production of input materials, including solvents, reagents, and starting materials, is a primary driver of carbon footprint for synthetic molecule medicines. Input materials derived from renewable feedstocks often have a lower carbon footprint than fossil-derived alternatives today and have the potential to achieve net-zero climate impact in the future. At the same time, recovering and reusing materials both reduces demand for environmentally costly virgin materials and mitigates the impacts of waste disposal.
These two strategies are most likely to succeed when deployed together. Although renewable materials are often more costly and less readily available than their fossil-derived counterparts, improving circularity in pharmaceutical manufacturing provides a way to reduce overall material demand, making it more feasible to source renewable materials.

Many substances used across the supply chain to produce APIs are harmful to human health and the environment. Substances used in API manufacturing may be directly hazardous to humans and the environment or may cause indirect hazards stemming from their production. And API molecules themselves may cause harm when they are excreted to the environment after use. At the same time, many chemistries used across the API supply chain present safety risks to plant operators and nearby communities.
In this presentation we will discuss the need to develop safer alternatives to the most hazardous substances and chemistries used in API production. And where use of hazardous substances is unavoidable, new technologies and practices are needed to improve the safety of handling these substances and to prevent their release to the environment after their intended use.

After a synthetic method or route to produce an API has been defined, chemists and engineers collaborate to design a scalable process capable of delivering the API in the desired amount and quality. As a process is designed and fit to equipment and a manufacturing facility there is enormous scope to influence productivity, energy consumption, and overall processing time, all of which contribute to the environmental footprint of API production.
Process and facility energy consumption are significant contributors to the environmental footprint of API manufacturing, especially for APIs produced through bioprocesses where energy-intensive clean room production environments tend to drive environmental footprint.
In this presentation will highlight this initiative which aims to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and other impacts related to energy consumption by reducing energy demand through process intensification and meeting remaining energy demand with renewable electricity. Two complementary strategies for electrifying API manufacturing are considered here: 1. Facility & equipment changes to enable electrification; and 2. Process changes to enable electrification Implementation of the ACS GCI PR roadmap to define a path to produce Net-Zero APIs while minimizing other hazards to human health and the environment within the next two decades.

The development of new strategies for assembling drug molecules is essential to minimize time, waste, and energy consumption in pharmaceutical manufacturing. The initial selection of the synthetic route and methodologies for assembling an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) plays a pivotal role in the overall sustainability of the manufacturing process. Traditionally, the synthesis of small molecule APIs depends on a relatively narrow range of reaction types and solution-phase chemistry. In contrast, platform synthetic methods used for producing peptides, oligonucleotides, monoclonal antibodies, and other recombinant proteins tend to be resource- and energy-intensive. This inherent material and energy demand presents a significant challenge to improving the sustainability of pharmaceutical manufacturing across various API modalities. To address these challenges, it is critical to develop additional synthetic technologies that can be applied to different types of APIs. These technologies should reduce waste, lower energy consumption, and minimize the use of hazardous substances, while also leveraging the advantages of innovative manufacturing techniques.

This panel will engage the audience in a deeper exploration of the strategy, framework, and implementation plan outlined in the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable’s sustainability roadmap. Panelists—including leaders from innovative pharmaceutical companies, key suppliers, and nonprofit organizations—will discuss what, how, and when required to advance sustainable medicines manufacturing over the next two decades. The session will highlight priority actions, collaboration opportunities, and critical enablers needed to accelerate progress across the industry.