Born in 1983, I grew up in an area of Germany with many lakes and forests. Summers were always hot, of course, and every now and then we had small forest fires. This year, though, Europe experienced a fire season like never before. Additionally, the small lake I live by is at the lowest water level I’ve ever seen due to the incredibly low amount of rain during the summer.
Thankfully, I can proudly say that Thermo Fisher Scientific cares about climate change, with committed science-based targets to help reach the company’s net-zero emissions status by 2050 .
You might not know that one of the great achievements within the company so far is to transition the Germering site to operate without using fossil fuels, as highlighted in the most recent Corporate Social Responsibility Report (page 41).
This site is home to the Thermo Fisher HPLC Center of Excellence, where our HPLC and UHPLC products are developed, designed and — to the most extent — manufactured.
How our green HPLC journey began
The journey to a more sustainable site began more than a decade ago with a fundamental decision to move away from fossil fuel heating systems to electric groundwater heat pump systems. Over the next 10 years, the site was modernized further to expand the use of heat pumps throughout the complete site for both the heating and cooling systems.
For Germering, the achievement of more efficient cooling was established with a two-step approach: The sites relies first on passive cooling, which uses groundwater combined with a heat exchanger. Second, when additional cooling is required, we utilize the electric heat pump.
Minimizing overall electric energy consumption was a second major focus for the site. For that purpose, we implemented new technology to re-use heat released with production, such as heat produced during the operational qualification of our HPLC systems and heat produced in server rooms.
Smart heating and cooling control systems plus new LED-based illumination control systems help further reduce energy demands.
An important part to achieving full net-zero status was the electricity supply. The site has a photovoltaic system, which contributes approximately 5-8 percent of the annual electrical consumption.
We transitioned the remaining electricity supply not supported by the onsite solar, to a 100 percent renewable energy source.
While this already is a fantastic achievement, our journey is by far from complete. The company will continue to evaluate how to improve product sustainability and address scope 3 emissions by engaging 90 percent of suppliers, by spend, to set science-based targets.
Thermo Fisher Scientific
United States
