Your factory may well already be in someone else's renewable electricity programme

IMAGE: AI

On Monday, during Climate Week in New York, Levi Strauss and Marks and Spencer launched something called the Fashion Renewable Collaborative, a shared push to get renewable electricity into the factories that actually make the clothes. On the face of it, it is the kind of announcement that slides past most people running a maternity, baby or children's brand. Two enormous companies, a global consultancy, a press release full of the word commitment. Nothing to do with you.

I think it is one of the more useful things to happen in this industry this year, and the reason has almost nothing to do with Levi's or M&S.

Here is what they have actually done. Together with Schneider Electric's advisory arm, they have built a shared programme that helps the factories in their supply chains buy renewable electricity. Not audit them. Not question them. Help them: education modules, guidance on what the market actually looks like in their country, and practical support to assess and buy the things that are genuinely hard to buy alone, power purchase agreements, energy attribute certificates, on site generation, storage. They have opened it to other brands as sponsors and members. It builds on programmes the two companies already ran separately, which between them had registered nearly five hundred supplier facilities.

The line that matters is buried in the coverage rather than the announcement. The point of doing this together is to stop the duplication that happens when several brands approach the same manufacturer separately, each with their own questionnaire, their own portal, their own deadline and their own version of the same request.

If you manufacture offshore, you already know exactly what that looks like from the other end. Your factory is not making product only for you. It is making product for you and for a handful of other brands, some of them very large, and every one of those brands is sending it a different sustainability form. When two of the biggest buyers in that building agree to send one shared route instead of two separate demands, everybody on that production line benefits, including the small brand with twelve per cent of the capacity.

Now, I want to be careful here, because there is a version of this story I do not believe. The version where factories are the problem, sitting still until a big Western brand arrives to educate them. That has not been my experience. Over the years I have walked around factories, a good number of them in the children's sector, that were doing this properly long before anybody asked them to. Solar on the roof. Wastewater treated and reused. Rainwater harvested. Heat recovered. Often done quietly, often funded out of their own margin, and often years ahead of the brands buying from them. Green factories are not new. They have been around for a very long time and some of the best of them are in our sector.

Two names make the point better than I can. Hirdaramani Group in Sri Lanka opened Mihila in 2009, the world's first purpose built LEED certified apparel factory, which went on to be certified carbon neutral. By 2019 the group had reached net zero for energy emissions across every one of its Sri Lankan factories. That is seven years before the announcement I have just described. Closer to our own corner of the industry, First Steps Babywear, which makes children's knitwear out of Bangalore and Hosur and turns out around fifty million garments a year, has a rooftop solar array running at around 750 kilowatts and has been fitting servo motors and LED lighting across its plants for years.

Neither of them did that because a Western brand asked. They did it because it was the right way to run a factory, and in most cases because it made commercial sense long before it became a reporting requirement.

So the useful way to read this announcement is not that factories need dragging into line. It is that the practical, expensive part of switching to renewable electricity, understanding the market in your country, getting access to a power purchase agreement, financing the kit, is genuinely hard to do alone, and aggregation makes it easier. For the factories already trying, that is a real help. For the ones who have not started, it removes the excuse.

The numbers behind this explain why electricity is the lever rather than one of the softer things we usually reach for. Textile processing accounts for more than half of the apparel industry's emissions, and renewable electricity represents roughly two thirds of the reduction potential that has been identified. Not packaging. Not transport. The power going into the buildings where fabric is dyed, finished and sewn. It is unglamorous, it is invisible to your customer, and it is where the actual carbon is.

M&S's own supplier programme, Re:Spark, gives a sense of the shape of this. It runs regional briefings in Vietnam, Turkey, India, China and Bangladesh, the places where most of our sector's product is genuinely made, and it lets smaller suppliers aggregate their demand so they can join multi buyer groups and access renewable electricity at a scale none of them could reach alone. Aggregation is the whole idea. It is the same principle as a buying group, applied to power.

Now the part I am not going to skip, because I think you would notice if I did. This does not solve the hardest problem, which is who pays. Cascale's work this year found that suppliers are still mostly expected to carry the upfront capital for decarbonisation while running on very thin margins, and that brands, who need to be able to move their orders at short notice, rarely offer the multi year volume guarantees a factory needs to justify a serious capital investment. A factory owner being asked to install solar wants to know one thing: will you still be buying from me in four years. Most brands cannot honestly answer yes. Shared education and aggregated buying genuinely help. They do not make that question go away.

So treat this as real progress rather than a solution, and then do the only thing that is actually in your control.

Which brings me to the part that is actually in your control, and it is not persuasion. It is due diligence.

When you are getting to know a factory, understanding how they run it matters as much as the sample they send you. What power are they using. How do they manage their wastewater. Do they harvest rainwater. What have they already invested in, and what are they planning. These are not awkward questions and good factories enjoy answering them, because the ones doing it well are usually rather proud of it and almost never asked. I would put these alongside the questions you already ask about capacity, lead times and compliance. They belong in the same conversation.

What this means for you: ask your manufacturer what they already do, and which brands' energy or decarbonisation programmes they are already enrolled in. The answer costs you nothing, it is very often more encouraging than you expect, and it is the cheapest piece of Scope 3 evidence you will ever collect. When a retail buyer's sustainability team asks what you are doing about supply chain emissions, and they will, being able to describe your factory's actual energy position is an infinitely better answer than a paragraph about your packaging.

And if you do not like what you hear, be realistic about which lever you are holding. A small brand taking twelve per cent of a factory's capacity is not going to change how that factory is run, and it is a waste of everyone's time to pretend otherwise. What you do have, always, is a choice about whether you work with them at all, made with your eyes open rather than after the fact. That choice is worth far more than influence you do not have.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What is the Fashion Renewable Collaborative?

A shared programme launched on the 22nd of September 2026 by Levi Strauss & Co. and Marks and Spencer, with SE Advisory Services, Schneider Electric's consulting practice, as implementation partner. It helps suppliers in fashion supply chains assess and buy renewable electricity, and it is open to other brands as sponsors and members.

My brand is small. Does this actually affect me?

Yes, indirectly. You are very likely sharing a factory with much larger brands, so improvements made on that site happen on your production line too. It also reduces the duplicated paperwork suppliers receive from multiple brands asking for the same thing.

What should I actually ask my manufacturer?

What power do you use, how do you manage wastewater, do you harvest rainwater, what have you already invested in, and which brands' energy programmes are you already enrolled in. Treat it as part of your normal due diligence, alongside capacity and lead times, rather than as a sustainability conversation.

Does this solve supply chain emissions?

No. Cascale's research this year found suppliers are still expected to carry the upfront capital while brands rarely offer the multi year volume guarantees that justify that investment. Shared education and aggregated buying are real progress. The question of who pays is unresolved.

If you want help working out what to ask a factory before you commit to them, or how to answer a retail buyer's sustainability questions honestly, come and talk to us at The Nest.

The Nest News lands every Tuesday: three insights shaping maternity, baby and children's products, and the actions you can take. Sign up at https://www.thenest.uk.com/the-nest-news-signup

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