How Big Pharma Is Turning Industrial Heat Into A Strategic Asset

BusinessEnergyHow Big Pharma Is Turning Industrial Heat Into A Strategic AssetByKen Silverstein,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Ken Silverstein analyzes the Energy Transition, AI and GeopoliticsFollow AuthorMay 26, 2026, 09:00am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.metallurgical plant smoke from chimneys industry drone photographygettyInside a pharmaceutical plant, heat is everywhere—and until recently, almost nobody was paying attention to it.Steam rising from boilers. High-temperature reactions turn raw inputs into finished drugs. Buildings and manufacturing lines are kept at precise temperatures around the clock. For decades, the fuel behind it all was natural gas, cheap enough that nobody questioned it and complex enough that nobody wanted to touch it. Then came Covid. Then, Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Then the Iran conflict, which sent gas prices surging 60% to 100% and fertilizer costs up 40%, shocks that rippled through supply chains from pharmaceuticals to food to chemicals.Now, AstraZeneca, working with the supply chain platform Secaro and the sustainability consultancy ERM, is launching a Clean Heat Program designed to do something that's proven surprisingly hard: systematically decarbonize how heat is produced, not just within the company's own walls but across its vast supplier network. The goal is not only cleaner operations. It's a more predictable business."The value today isn't just decarbonization—it's cost reduction, resilience, and stability," says Jon Hughes, a partner at ERM who leads on Scope 3 emissions across global supply chains, in a conversation with me. "Doing nothing is not a strategy anymore."Industrial heat has long been one of the hardest parts of the energy system to decarbonize—too customized, too embedded in production processes, too expensi...