India Needs $15B to Lead Next-Gen Revolution, Canopy Says
Canopy believes India is better poised than anyone else to become a global leader in next-generation materials—potentially producing over 10 million tons of these next-gen fibers annually. It just requires an investment between $13 billion to $15.6 billion to do so.
“India has all the ingredients—abundant feedstock, technical expertise and a culture of innovation, Canopy’s founder and executive director Nicole Rycroft said. “What’s needed now is targeted investment, industry collaboration and government support to scale this vision into reality.”
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These ingredients were further explored in “Unlocking India’s Next Gen Economy: The (Untapped) Investment Frontiers in Material Substitution in India’s Textile and Pulp and Paper Industries,” a 36-page paper released during Prabhav 2024, an investment forum run by the India Impact Investors Council (IIIC). Ultimately, the paper underscores India’s “enormous potential” to transform 100 million tons of agricultural residues and two million tons of polyester-cotton textile waste into valuable low-carbon paper, packaging and viscose for domestic and global markets.
With that in mind, the environmental nonprofit has set an “ambitious goal” of catalyzing 60 million tons of next-gen pulp, paper and textiles globally over the next decade. That undertaking would need a cool $78 billion.
“This scale-up would displace primary and restoration-priority forests from the ‘fiber basket’ and, in doing so, help support global climate and planetary targets,” the report reads. “In catalyzing fiber and supply chain innovation, pulping technology and new infrastructure for the recycling, pulping and processing of low-carbon next-gen fibers, several regions have an exciting opportunity to be at the forefront of the global transition to low-impact materials.”
India plays a “pivotal role” in this transition as the No. 1 region in mind for this opportunity, given its abundance of agricultural residues and textile waste. Over the next decade, an estimated $13 billion to $15.6 billion of investment would position India as a prominent, preferred supplier of low-carbon pulp and its end products on the global market.
“A concerted, industrial development strategy that aligns technology, feedstock supply, national and global policies, skill development and investment to address urgent issues of climate, pollution, poverty and biodiversity loss is compelling,” per the paper. “A focused, early infusion of climate finance capital into both innovation and infrastructure to simultaneously build up next-gen feedstock delivery and pulping capacity would support the decarbonization of two key industrial sectors—paper and textiles—through material substitution and create an opportunity for India and several other nations to take global leadership.”