How much energy does the Alleppey coir cluster use, and which units use most?
About 8,557 toe a year, by the BEE SME study of the cluster's 451 units. The 15 dyeing units use 6,135 toe of it, 72%, and the 7 PVC tufting units 2,121 toe, 25%. The 392 handloom and matting units barely register: weaving is mostly hand work.
Who the 451 units are
- 210 handloom and fibre mat units and 182 matting and rug units: the bulk of the cluster by count.
- 29 rubberised coir units, pressing rubber sheet onto mats at about 80 C on electric hot presses.
- 15 dyeing units, bleaching and dyeing yarn in hot water.
- 8 spinning units and 7 PVC tufting units, where coir pieces are set into liquid PVC and heat cured.
- 300 of the 451 spend under Rs 10,000 a year on energy; just 7 spend more than Rs 1 crore.
Where the 8,557 toe goes
- Dyeing: 409 toe per unit x 15 = 6,135 toe. Fuel heats thermic fluid heaters, boilers and chulhas for bleach and dye baths.
- PVC tufting: 303 toe x 7 = 2,121 toe, mostly furnace oil for the curing heaters.
- Power loom matting: 6 toe x 40 = 240 toe, all electricity.
- Rubberised coir: 2.1 toe x 29 = 61 toe, all electricity.
- The cluster total counts these 91 units only. Hand looms, spinning and stencilling are left out, so the true total is a little higher.
Why the heat decides your number
Dyers and PVC units burn a mix of firewood, coconut husk, furnace oil and diesel. Wood and husk carry biogenic CO2, reported apart from your total; oil is fossil and counts in full. Two dyeing units with the same output can be four times apart in fossil CO2 just because one fires husk and the other oil. Your fuel purchase records are the first thing a buyer's footprint request will need.
What the study found worth doing
- Wood gasifiers in place of furnace oil fired thermic fluid heaters: a 3 month payback in its PVC unit example.
- VFDs on heater fans, oil pumps, hydro extractors and dryer blowers: 25% of 86.6 kW in its dyeing example, a 7 month payback.
- Flue heat recovery from 220 C down to 130 C on wood fired heaters: 4.5% of fuel.
- Solar water heating for 80 C bleach water, usable about 8 months a year in Alappuzha.
Fossil CO2 for the 22 dyeing and PVC units, upper bound (estimate)
- Electricity: (15 x 442,920) + (7 x 329,838) = 8.95 million kWh x 0.675 kg = 6,043 t
- Thermal fuel if all of it were furnace oil: (15 x 371,250) + (7 x 275,000) = 7.49 million L x 2.97 kg = 22,256 t
- Upper bound: about 28,300 t a year
- Every litre replaced by husk or wood moves 2.97 kg from the fossil total to the biogenic line
Unit counts and energy from the BEE SME Program cluster study of Alleppey coir, which applies its largest sample unit of each type to the whole segment. The study does not split thermal fuel by type, so the oil case is a ceiling. Grid factor CEA FY 2025-26; furnace oil 2.97 kg CO2 per litre.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads KSEB bills and furnace oil or diesel invoices into fossil CO2 in minutes. It has no factor for firewood or husk, so record those quantities yourself and report their CO2 as biogenic.
Sources: BEE SME Program, Alleppey coir cluster study (SAMEEEKSHA), CEA, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, version 22.0
Last reviewed 2026-11-01.