October 21, 2025- The PPD™ clinical research business of Thermo Fisher Scientific recently announced the launch of its innovative Clinical Trial Carbon Calculator, designed to help biopharmaceutical companies and research sponsors estimate, understand and reduce the environmental footprint of their clinical trials.
Clinical trials are essential to advancing medicine, but their environmental impact has long been overlooked. Research shows that a single large, Phase 3 clinical trial can generate up to 3,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent gases (mT CO2e), roughly the same as the annual emissions of 176 Americans. Multiplied across the industry, the carbon footprint of global clinical pipelines can rival that of entire nations, like the British Virgin Islands or Turks and Caicos.
The Carbon Calculator is an open access tool thatprovides an evidence-based framework for assessing emissions across every phase of a study—from investigational product manufacturing and patient travel to lab sample processing and site operations. By quantifying each activity’s contribution to total emissions, the tool helps users:
- Identify high-impact “carbon hotspots”
- Compare study designs for CO2e efficiency
- Implement strategies to lower emissions without compromising quality or compliance