The fashion industry has the ability to steer a new industrial revolution. Whether it also has the will to do so, however, is another matter.
To be sure, it remains difficult to ascertain what exact energy mix powers global apparel production, said Liv Simpliciano, head of policy and research at Fashion Revolution, the grassroots advocacy group that published on Thursday a follow-up to its “What Fuels Fashion” report.
Despite material processing making up the bulk of the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions—a heavy reliance on fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal is almost certainly to blame—so much of the supply chain remains opaque, with few brands willing to disclose a country-by-country breakdown of what it takes to create enough hot water and steam to wash, bleach, dye, print and finish the fabrics that end up in a summer frock or a pair of pre-distressed jeans.
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But just as the fashion industry’s problems are fuel-related, Simpliciano said, so are the solutions. Among them is harnessing what is sometimes referred to as clean heat, which means fulfilling the supply chain’s thermal energy needs with renewable sources such as wind and solar. This, she said, is the battleground where businesses need to focus their attention and resources. The technologies to electrify process heat that rarely exceeds 250 degrees Celsius, or 482 degrees Fahrenheit, such as heat pumps and electrical boilers, already exist. This means that phasing out the fossil fuel use that is generating emissions, pouring out pollution and overheating workplaces is a goal that only needs to be translated “from potential to practice.”
And yet only 10 percent of the world’s 200 largest clothing purveyors, with an estimated combined annual turnover of more than $2.7 trillion, disclose renewable electricity targets for their supply chain, Fashion Revolution found. Even fewer—6 percent—reveal broader renewable energy targets. Without electrification, Simpliciano said, renewable targets run the risk of being feeble and ineffective, with brands potentially turning to biomass and other problematic substitutions as stopgap measures. Yet a mere 7 percent of the brands Fashion Revolution looked at divulged any efforts to electrify high-heat processes.
“The majority of the industry is not prioritizing shifting away from fossil fuel production to electrified solutions,” she said.
There are a number of barriers to this, of course. The energy grids in most garment-producing countries, like China, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Turkey, run particularly fossil-fuel heavy, creating what Simpliciano describes as a “chicken and egg” problem: Manufacturers already operating on razor-thin margins are reluctant to electrify because defying convention can be prohibitively expensive without some kind of upfront capital investment, while governments and utilities are loathe to shell out for renewable infrastructure without clear market signals that would justify the time, money and effort of such an overhaul. This has created what Simpliciano calls a “gridlock,” one that isn’t helped by the fact that just 7 percent of brands are disclosing how they’re advocating for renewable energy policies in the countries they source from.
“But brands can actually break that gridlock by investing in clean heat technologies, because the more pilots that brands invest in, the more demand that that creates, which creates an aggregate of demand,” she said.
Meanwhile, only 6 percent of brands declare upfront, meaning capex, support to help suppliers replace their coal-powered boilers. An even smaller 2 percent report helping with ongoing, or opex, costs such as renewable electricity bills or equipment maintenance.
“The technologies are available, yes, but it’s not simply like plug and play. You need to be genuinely working with your supplier, because they’re experts in a local context,” Simpliciano said. “It requires investing long-term in suppliers and co-creating solutions with them. And, you know, these solutions are expensive. It’s not cost-neutral to have a clean tech revolution. But evidence shows that it does pay off, not only financially, but in the fact that it’s reducing emissions and temperatures and reducing air pollution.”
Another thing brands can do is better disclose their coal phase-out targets. Less than one-quarter (18 percent) of the 200 headliners do this, Fashion Revolution found. Only one—H&M Group—publicly acknowledges its use of purchased steam, a “major loophole” that the organization says is going unnoticed as “essentially a way for brands to outsource their coal usage.”
“A facility might not be burning coal on site, but they could purchase steam that’s funneled from a nearby industrial site that burns coal,” Simpliciano said. “So that’s a huge amount of fossil fuels that brands could be reliant on, indirectly. But the reason this is so crucial is that if we start to socialize the idea, to push brands to include purchased steam in their coal phase-out targets, it actually has the potential to transform entire industrial zones. And it wouldn’t benefit just fashion. It would benefit other sectors that are producing in places like China with cleaner air.”
Workers who are bearing the brunt of the increasingly dangerous swelter accelerated by the climate crisis would also win, said Ciara Barry, policy and campaigns manager at Fashion Revolution. Together with the climate nonprofit Action Speaks Louder, the organization is promoting a campaign called “Clean Heat for Cool Work.” The goal: to replace the “Victorian-era reality of burning coal and wood” to safeguard the well-being of workers and communities.
“One of the biggest issues with processing facilities where coal and diesel in particular are used is it creates really hot conditions for your rights,” she said. “With clean heat, it would lower the amount of fossil fuels used, which brings down greenhouse gas emissions and also creates a cooler work environment for workers so they can manage things like heat stress.”
The public health benefits, too, would be enormous. A study that the American Lung Association published in August found that if manufacturing facilities powered their processes with green technologies instead of fossil fuels, American communities could see over $1 trillion in public health benefits by 2050 by avoiding 77,200 pollution-related deaths, 33.2 million asthma attacks and 13 million missed school days.
Brands can be active participants in fighting the worsening conditions in countries like Bangladesh, where temperatures have regularly soared past 43 degrees Celsius, or 109 degrees Fahrenheit, Barry said. This includes simple efforts like measuring wet-bulb globe temperatures—as read by a thermometer covered in a damp cloth to measure relative humidity—on their production floors.
“This can be done right now with a $15 thermometer,” she said. “But no brands are telling us that they are measuring it; it’s a major missing primary data across the industry. We know heat stress is a huge issue, but we don’t know to what extent and that that sort of monitoring can be done right now with the tech that we have on a really low-cost, high-impact way.”
Simpliciano said that Fashion Revolution doesn’t only want to call out the fashion industry’s shortfalls but also show that there is a viable pathway forward. And clean heat is one of those things that could be transformational.
“What’s missing is the money to back it and, frankly, the willpower to kind of upend the status quo,” she said. “They can do this with technology that is literally there. And we hope that this research is a rallying cry for that, to put clean heat on the map, not just for people in our space but also for the average citizen. I hope that clean heat is something that brands start to include by literally naming it in their sustainability reports.”
