Pharmaceuticals
The Pharmaceutical market is made up of businesses that manufacture medicinal and botanical products, pharmaceutical preparations, in vivo and in vitro diagnostic substances, and biological products.2 Nationwide, there are about 2500 pharmaceutical facilities.4 One hundred and twelve of these are large sites and are shown grouped by state in the map below.1


More than 32 of the large pharmaceutical sites use CHP. Combined they generate more than 740 MW of capacity.1 (For more on CHP capacity and sites, see Current Status).

For more general background, see the EPA's Profile of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry.

Additional information is available about the:

• Current Status
• Future Potential
• Benefits, Challenges & Solutions

Competition in this market is high. In recent years this industry has seen a number of horizontal consolidations among pharmaceutical companies; as well as vertical mergers between pharmaceutical companies and other health-related businesses like pharmacy benefit managers.5

Industry consolidation, rising raw material and labor expenses, personal importation of drugs, competition from generics, and the cost of new product development all put pressure on the pharmaceutical market to reduce costs and increase efficiencies.1

Specifically, the pharmaceutical industry is interested in:

1. securing reliable and high quality sources of power
2. improving efficiencies
3. decreasing energy costs
4. reducing emissions outputs

To see how CHP has addressed these needs in the Pharmaceutical market, see the Case Studies section below.

Typically, this market is characterized by:

• Large annual operating hours (avg. >6000)1
• Electricity Load (avg. > 5 MW)1
• Substantial coincident steam requirement (avg. >35,000 lbs/hr)1
• Operations that are sensitive to power outages and poor power quality
• The need to reduce energy costs and emissions

These factors make CHP attractive for this market. However, careful economic screening of individual projects is still critical to making a sound CHP decision.

For a range of options to integrate CHP, go to Future Potential.

CHP systems provided energy cost savings, increased energy efficiencies, lowered emissions, and improved energy reliability. Issues included a landlord's discomfort with landfill gas technology, and one site was unable to sell their excess capacity to the utility.


For additional case studies, visit Distributed Energy Case Study Database supported by the United States Department of Energy. Cases may be searched by market sector, site name, state, power size range, prime mover, fuel type and thermal energy use.