Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is core to our goal of reducing our environmental footprint across our facilities, transportation fleet vehicles and shipping infrastructure.

Facility CO₂ Emissions

We exceeded our Healthy Planet 2010 climate change goal to reduce our baseline 1990 CO₂emission levels by seven percent in absolute terms by 2010, achieving a 23 percent absolute reduction by the end of 2010 while sales grew by 450 percent during the same period. Our challenge going forward is to continue reducing absolute emissions while our business continues to grow.

Guided by our Climate Friendly Energy Policy, we invest approximately $40 million each year in cogeneration and renewable energy capital projects across the company. In the last five years, 105 energy reduction projects have been approved, and 80 have been completed. These projects will collectively reduce CO₂ emissions by 160,888 metric tons annually.

Although we prefer to reduce our direct emissions and continually seek ways to accomplish this, we have historically used offsets to support renewable energy projects and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through external projects. Going forward, we will seek to achieve our emissions reductions through projects completed at our own sites. Our Healthy Future 2015 goal is to achieve a further 20 percent absolute reduction from our 2010 baseline by 2020, without the use of voluntary offsets.

An accounting of our emissions since 2003 can be found in our reports submitted to the Carbon Disclosure Project. Further, we comply with and report to the World Resources Institute (WRI) Greenhouse Gas Reporting protocol.

Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC's)

Johnson & Johnson has been working to eliminate the use of ozone depleting HCFC's in equipment greater than five tons of capacity by 2015. However, a lack of acceptable refrigeration alternatives that meet our operational and safety standards will require us to modify our plans. To allow the development of new technologies and alternatives, such as natural refrigerants, our sites will develop their HCFC phase-out plans by 2015, with project execution by 2025. We will continue to monitor progress in this area and eliminate HCFC's where possible.

Transportation-Related CO₂ Emissions

Our Healthy Future 2015 Goal is to achieve a 20 percent improvement in fleet emissions efficiency by 2015, which we intend to accomplish in several ways including:

   • Purchasing hybrid fuel, alternative and renewable fuel, and electric vehicles
   • Cycling out older, less efficient vehicles
   • Educating drivers about environmentally friendly driving

In 2010, Johnson & Johnson was recognized as the #1 commercial hybrid fleet in the industry, and received the 2010 Fleet Environmental Leadership Award from Automotive Fleet magazine. At the end of 2010, 25 percent of our U.S. Fleet was composed of hybrid vehicles.

We fell short of our Healthy Planet 2010 goal to reduce fleet CO₂ emissions per kilometer driven by 30 percent from our 2003 baseline, due mostly to difficulties in the method used to account for our emissions, given the large number of vehicles in our fleet.

In previous reporting, we calculated our CO emissions per kilometer driven by gathering information on the number of miles driven by each fleet automobile and the amount of fuel used. Maintaining accuracy with this method, however, has proved difficult given the large number of automobiles in our fleet.

That method, which we used in previous reporting, calculated our CO2 emissions per kilometer driven using the miles driven of each vehicle and the amount of fuel used. Going forward, our calculations will be based on government vehicle fuel efficiency ratings, such as Corporate Average Fuel Economic Standards published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We expect this method to be a more reliable and effective measure. When using this method, our U.S. fleet averaged 210 grams per kilometer driven in 2010 compared to 250 grams per kilometer in 2003. This represents a 15 percent improvement.

Shipping - Related CO₂ Emissions

Our emissions reduction efforts extend to the transportation of our products. We participate in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's SmartWay program which helps companies voluntarily increase transportation energy efficiency while decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. During 2010, more than 98 percent of our U.S. carriers were SmartWay approved.

Increasing our use of railways to transport freight within the U.S. and between the U.S. and Canada has also helped our efforts. We increased rail use by approximately 23 percent in 2010– equivalent to removing 8,330 trucks from U.S. highways, saving more than 832,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and eliminating approximately 7,500 tons of CO₂ emissions. This has further benefits, such as reduced road congestion and decreased risk of driver-related accidents.