Though pharmaceutical organisations have more sustainability data than ever before, the value of this data often remains limited to one-off reporting exercises, rather than informing daily decision-making. The notion of drawing from accurate, updated data to inform each operational decision and limit adverse environmental impact currently appears complex and out of reach. Real-time, or near real-time, life cycle assessment (LCA) has the potential to make this notion a reality, as LCA already provides reliable and credible intelligence on product carbon footprint and other environmental impact categories.
Real-time LCA for the pharmaceutical industry combines standard LCA methods with routinely updated operational data from manufacturing, procurement and logistics systems. The goal is decision-grade insight that teams can use during product, process and supply-chain decisions, not just after the fact. Operational changes (for example, in transport mode, energy mix, supplier or the bill of materials) are reflected in near real-time product-level impact results, turning LCA into an ongoing decision support capability rather than a retrospective reporting exercise.
What Problem Does Real-Time LCA Solve?
As understanding of the climate crisis and urgency of action have evolved, so too have requirements for businesses and industry. The result is that sustainability action and its required data has emerged in a fragmented and uncoordinated manner, in response to evolving expectations. Environmental performance in a single organisation is expressed through multiple, disconnected data sets or certifications, whether product LCAs, B Corp certification, or data gathered for frameworks such as the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). The fact that different teams, as well as external consultants or specialist providers, manage distinct sustainability responsibilities further exacerbates the issue (see Figure 1).
Consequently, organisations frequently operate with:
• Duplicated data collection efforts, where similar information is requested multiple times.
• Inconsistent assumptions and methodologies, and inconsistent secondary databases (the databases converting kWh, kg or tonnekm into emission profiles, such as kg CO₂e), system boundaries (what the footprint includes/ excludes), and allocation rules (how shared impacts are split).
• Limited interoperability between systems, with sustainability data stored across spreadsheets, third-party platforms and internal databases.
• Minimal cross-functional visibility, meaning insights generated in one department are rarely accessible or actionable in another. • Low reusability of results, where studies are difficult to update and quickly become out of date for operational decisions.
Technology companies refer to a ‘single source of truth’: a governed way to store and manage critical activity data so it is standardised, quality-checked and accessible across functions. To address the issues outlined above, pharma can learn from this approach by treating sustainability activity data (materials, energy, yields, transport, waste and supplier inputs) with the same discipline as financial or operational data. LCA offers a strong foundation for this, as a comprehensive method for quantifying product- or even company level environmental impact, underpinned by internationally recognised standards, including ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. Sector initiatives such as PAS 2090 are also emerging to improve consistency for pharmaceutical products specifically. However, for LCA to support fastmoving commercial environments, it must move beyond static, point-in-time studies and be integrated into organisational data systems so results can be refreshed when the underlying business data changes.
