The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) has recommended a comprehensive and coordinated strategy involving efficient machinery, renewable electrification, targeted financing and outcome-based regulation to accelerate industrial decarbonisation in Bangladesh's ready-made garment (RMG) sector.
The recommendations were made in a CPD study titled "Renewable Energy as a Competitiveness Strategy for Industrial Decarbonization in Bangladesh's RMG Sector" presented at a national dialogue on "Industrial Decarbonisation in the RMG Sector: How to Take it Forward?" in the city on Sunday.
Dr Khondaker Golam Moazzem, Research Director of CPD, moderated the event while Sami Mohammad, Programme Associate of CPD, and Atikuzzaman Shazeed, Research Associate of CPD, presented the findings of the study.
The study covered 350 RMG factories and examined energy use, machinery efficiency, renewable energy adoption and financial and institutional barriers.
According to the study, the RMG sector remains structurally locked into carbon-intensive production, meaning incremental energy-efficiency measures alone will not be sufficient to achieve deep decarbonisation.
The study found that capital and energy function as complements under the existing production system, while a core group of machines remains difficult or impossible to substitute.
The CPD therefore recommended directing machinery replacement incentives toward areas where significant energy savings are technically feasible.
Cutting, for example, accounts for around 5.5 percent of the installed machine stock but could deliver about 27 percent of total savings, while sewing represents around 85 percent of the machine stock but provides less than 3 percent of substitution-based savings.
The think tank also called for a shift towards overall renewable electrification, alongside long-term research and development into lower-energy sewing technologies.
It stressed that policy support should not focus solely on machine substitution, particularly because sewing has a large irreplaceable machine core.
The CPD recommended giving greater policy attention to thermal processes in washing and dyeing, which the study identified as the most energy-intensive production stage. Rooftop solar can offset grid and captive electricity consumption, but it cannot currently replace gas-fired boilers used in thermal processes.
On financing, the CPD urged the government and financial institutions to expand blended finance, combining private investment, concessional lending and government-backed credit, particularly for smaller factories.
The study found that smaller factories face the largest efficiency gaps, with the smallest group showing a 57.3 percent energy-saving gap compared with 8.9 percent for the largest factories.
The study also recommended that financial institutions develop standardised appraisal frameworks for renewable energy and energy-efficiency investments to reduce the technical burden on factories seeking loans.
The CPD further called for outcome-based regulation, including mandatory energy audits and standardised emissions reporting, rather than an approach focused mainly on procedural compliance.
It also recommended better coordination among institutions to reduce transaction costs related to renewable energy projects.
