Meet the Honorees: Chris Famolare, Global Head of Sustainable Operations, MilliporeSigma

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Chris Famolare E+E Leader #EE50in22 

The Environment+Energy Leader Honoree program is an annual list that recognizes the environment and energy “doers” who break the trail in creating new solutions, programs, platforms, best practices and products to help their companies – or other companies – achieve greater success in commercial and industrial environment and energy management. Meet the Honorees… is an ongoing series that will feature one E+E Honoree from 2022 each week. See the complete list of 2022 Honorees here.

For the past ten years, Chris Famolare has held the position of Global Head of Sustainable Operations at MilliporeSigma, the life science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.  The global science and technology company operates as MilliporeSigma in the US and Canada and employs more than 60,000 individuals across 66 countries. Chris is a certified energy manager and auditor experienced in delivering Executive Leadership Team members an iterative Sustainable Operations strategy focused on greenhouse gas emissions, green power, energy efficiency, water, and waste.

Take us through a typical workday. What are a few of your ongoing responsibilities?

Working for an organization that is headquartered out of Germany, my morning is usually packed with meetings. They vary - from sustainability strategy meetings to workstream meetings or project meetings. Depending on the time of year - my day could be focused on one of the many annual cycles we have in place to drive progress throughout the organization.

  • In Q1, we are kicking off energy and water efficiency projects that were identified during the previous year's cycle. We're also updating systems to reflect updated internal energy and water targets at the site level, wrapping up content for the Sustainability Report, calculating our Scope 3 emissions, and finalizing our EU Taxonomy reporting.
  • In Q2, we're preparing for our CDP response, bringing energy auditors in to identify efficiency projects, and planning for internal training offerings centered on energy efficiency.
  • Q3 is the big push to collect efficiency and onsite renewable energy proposals from our sites and evaluate which projects we will fund in the coming year. We evaluate projects based on impact towards achieving our energy, greenhouse gas, and water goals - as well as the financial performance of the investment. This evaluation results in what we call our "EDISON Score" - named after our energy and water efficiency program "EDISON".
  • Q4 is a sprint to the finish - focusing on target setting for the coming year, completing projects that were budgeted for the current year, and preparing for year-end reporting.

Throughout the year, we'll take on several special projects - whether it be negotiating a deal for renewable energy, developing a supplier engagement strategy, changing processes to better integrate sustainability, advising project management teams on green building design, or diving into data-driven sustainability solutions such as building tools to enable and accelerate our ability as an organization to quantify impacts and drive improvements across all areas.

What are some of the biggest challenges your company/organization will be tackling in 2023 and beyond?

Into next year and beyond, we plan to continue towards our goal of reducing our ecological footprint. By 2030, we plan to reduce our Scope 1 & 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 50% compared to our 2020 baseline, and source 80% of our electricity from renewables. We also aim to achieve climate neutrality by 2040 across Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.

In 2023 we are doubling down on our energy and water efficiency program (EDISON program) - increasing our investment from approximately 4.6 million Euro in 2022 to nearly 10 million Euro in 2023. This investment will be directed towards energy and water efficiency, and onsite renewable energy projects to help us achieve our goals.

We are also planning to go to market for additional renewable energy contracts in Europe - exploring options such as Virtual Power Purchase Agreements as we have had great success with VPPA's in the US over the past several years.

Another workstream is focused on revising the CapEx investment process to deeply embed sustainability in the project development process - integrating green construction techniques and climate-neutral designs wherever technically feasible.

We will continue to tackle product carbon footprinting - a multi-year project that started in 2021. As a company with 300,000 products, we are taking a data-driven approach to quantify the cradle-to-gate emissions associated with the products we sell. Although this will not be complete, or ready for release in 2023 - we're well on our way to success and testing the results of a pilot project.

Further, the company is increasing our focus on supplier engagement - working closely with colleagues within our Procurement, Quality, and Operations organizations to define a clear path forward with the goal of streamlining our supplier touchpoints across several topic areas and building a supplier and product sustainability database to serve various use cases related to sustainability.

Finally, we plan to continue the expansion of our sustainability team - investing in top talent to drive our programs and projects forward.

What was a successful project or implementation you worked on at your company that you can share? Do you have any tips that would help colleagues at other companies who are contemplating similar projects?

We recently announced the commercial operation of the Azure Sky Wind and Storage project in which MilliporeSigma contracted with Enel Green Power for 68MW of the project’s 350MW installed capacity. This 12-year commitment should match 100% of MilliporeSigma’s U.S. electric consumption with renewable power generated by 600-foot-tall wind turbines. The project is in Throckmorton, Texas and I had the pleasure of playing a lead role in putting the deal together. We lead as the anchor-buyer within a consortium of four buyers who collectively contracted for 111MW of the project’s capacity. By approaching the market together with this larger energy demand, we were able to interest large-scale developers and get an attractive deal across the finish line.

I would like to recognize our partners from Sustainability Roundtable Inc.’s Net Zero Consortium for Buyers who led us through the process and helped us deliver on this virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA). I would also like to recognize the core project team including Joanna Raleigh, Sourcing Manager and Bob Hoffman, Global Head of Site Services and Utility Sourcing for their lead roles in the project. There are many others I would like to mention who supported this project, but mentioning all names is not possible, so I would like to thank our Board, Legal department, Treasury, Accounting, Controlling, Procurement, Tax, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Sustainability, Communications teams, and more. This project was successful due to the collaboration exhibited by all involved.

Tell us about a favorite hobby, passion, or book you've read recently that has had an impact on you and your work.

I really enjoy finding solutions to problems. I guess you could say that’s my hobby. Whether it be working on a project around the house, building or reviving a small business, or developing a novel solution to a problem at work – I really enjoy looking at a situation, figuring out what the issue is, where it needs to go, and seeing it through to completion. I am very hands-on and enjoy taking on several projects at the same time – which my friends and family will tell you is both a blessing and a curse as there’s only so much time in a day!

Connect with Chris and the rest of his team at MilliporeSigma

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