Net-Zero Pakistan : Decarbonizing Pakistan’s Textile sector
Net-Zero Pakistan (NZP), a coalition of industrial players primarily in Pakistan’s textile sector, faced challenges of measuring and reporting their Green House Gas (GHG) emissions to set net zero targets aligned with the ambitious Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi).
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Background
The Pakistan Environment Trust (PET) is a non-profit organization established in 2019, aiming to leverage global capital and expertise to address Pakistan's most pressing climate issues. Its vision is driven by a commitment to tackle the environmental challenges facing the country and its residents, and work towards a better, more sustainable future.
One of PET's flagship programs is Net-Zero Pakistan (NZP), launched to assist Pakistan's industries in achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. This initiative represents a strategic coalition of companies majorly in the textile sector, public institutions, and experts, all united in their goal to decarbonize Pakistan's economy. The NZP initiative aims to develop a comprehensive road map that supports Pakistan’s private sector in reaching net-zero as quickly and efficiently as possible.
NZP selected MyCarbon for their comprehensive and practical approach to sustainability, to provide services to five NZP member companies including Lucky Textile Mills Ltd, Liberty Textile Mills Ltd, Alkaram Textile Mills Ltd, Feroze1888 Mills and Yunus Textile Mills Ltd.
The Challenge
Pakistan's textile companies are large-scale production powerhouses, forming a significant part of Pakistan's export revenue. Each company operates around five manufacturing units and employs an average of 10,000 people. As part of their decarbonization efforts to align with international retail buyer guidelines, many of these companies have committed to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). However, due to technical capacity constraints close to SBTi submission deadlines, they required assistance with the calculation, submission, and validation process to set credible near and long-term net-zero targets.
For companies operating in the textile and apparel landscape in Pakistan, these challenges were complex, and accurately calculating these emissions was imperative for:
- Comprehensively understanding and measuring their GHG inventories along Scope 1, 2 and 3
- Defining scope of reporting boundaries, establishing calculation methodologies, relevant assumptions and identifying relevant emission factors
- Setting SBTi-aligned short- and near-term targets across Scope 1, 2 and 3 and submitting them to SBTi for validation
These challenges were particularly prevalent for companies in measuring their Scope 3 footprint, as quality data was not readily available for upstream and downstream value chain due to supplier engagement constraints at the source (e.g., cotton), difficulties in extracting downstream transportation and distribution data and relevant Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of their products.
The MyCarbon team, having engaged with similar exercises and having a local presence in Pakistan was selected for this engagement, owing to their scientific and engineering expertise. Recognizing that every company has unique value chains and GHG inventories, MyCarbon tailored their engagement strategy to match the needs of every company.
The Next Steps
In response to the Pakistan textile GHG calculation and SBTi submission project, MyCarbon conducted kick-off meetings with key stakeholders of member companies to understand existing data repositories and communicate the data collection process from both a carbon accounting perspective and business perspective to ensure key stakeholder buy in.
The MyCarbon team employed a comprehensive approach in identifying and defining the scopes of emissions to map the boundaries specific to the textile industry, aligned with the GHG protocol. This was essential to capture the full scope of emissions and relevant exclusions for all Scopes, according to the requirements of clause 4.1 of the ISO 14064-1 standard. Relevant emission factors were sourced from DEFRA for Scope 3, which included Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) emissions, especially in regard to Cotton. Where emissions conversion factors based on spend for the appropriate currency were not available, emissions factors based on other currencies were applied. For the downstream emissions categories such as downstream transportation and distribution, and end of life of sold products, assumptions based on industry average data were used to create weighted average emissions factors.
The Results
The NZP textile company case study demonstrated the complexities of calculating emissions in a manufacturing business, especially those with a significantly complex Scope 3 textile value chain.
With the help of MyCarbon, all five NZP member companies have successfully submitted their targets to SBTi for validation in the first half of 2024, with Lucky Textile Mills achieving a significant milestone by having their near-term and net-zero targets officially approved in June 2024.
The innovative solutions and forward-thinking strategies developed serve as an inspiration for companies facing similar challenges and set NZP member companies as a benchmark among industry peers in Pakistan.
“Working closely with MyCarbon Team, we are able to establish a complete strategy and mapping of near term and long term SBTI targets. Their expertise in applying different methodologies for Scope 3 calculations proved instrumental in this process.”
(Mursaleen Usmani, Manager Environment & Sustainability, Lucky Textile Mills Limited)
“Collaborating with the my-Carbon team was an excellent experience. They provided exceptional support in reviewing requirements and guiding us to achieve 100% data accuracy. This progressive assistance has enhanced our understanding of the mechanisms involved and solidified our SBTi journey. We trust their expertise for our SBTi submission.”
(Raazia Anum, Manager Sustainability & ESG, Yunus Textile Mills)