How much wood and electricity does a towel and bed sheet unit use per kg?
About 1.85 kWh of electricity and 2.78 kg of wood per kg of finished product, in BEE's Solapur report: a typical integrated unit made 172,800 kg a year on 319,506 kWh and 480 t of wood. The power is about 1.25 kg CO2 a kg; the wood's CO2 is biogenic and shown separately.
The typical unit in the report
- Integrated: yarn is doubled, soaked 24 hours in soap water, bleached, hank dyed for 90 to 120 minutes a batch, soaped to fix colour, spun dry in a hydro extractor and dried in the sun, then wound, warped and woven.
- Electricity runs doubling, winding and warping machines, power looms, hydro extractors and lights: 319,506 kWh a year.
- Wood at about 3,200 kcal a kg fires thermic fluid heaters, boilers and chulhas for hot water: 480 t a year.
- Output about 172,800 kg a year. Energy is 8 to 10% of manufacturing cost, 42% of it for heat.
Dyed yarn carries more wood than the average
The 2.78 kg is a unit average across everything made. Dyeing alone used 9,846 to 17,066 kcal per kg of yarn in three units the report measured, which is about 3.1 to 5.3 kg of wood per kg of dyed yarn. If your product is mostly dyed yarn, or dyed in hot water, use a figure from your own wood and dyeing records, not the average.
How a buyer reads the wood
Under the GHG Protocol, CO2 from burning wood is biogenic and goes on a separate line, outside Scope 1. The methane and nitrous oxide from the fire stay in Scope 1, and they are small. So a wood fired unit shows a low fossil figure per kg, mostly from grid power, as long as the wood tonnes are shown next to it. Any coal you burn counts in full.
The boiler fix in the same report
- Old hot water boilers ran at 35 to 40% efficiency. A packaged 600 kg an hour wood fired boiler at about 65% cuts wood from 480 to 273 t a year.
- 207 t saved at Rs 2,500 a tonne is Rs 5.18 lakh a year; cost Rs 5.91 lakh, payback 1.14 years at 2010 prices.
- The report calls this a 290 t CO2 cut. It is wood, so that is biogenic CO2. The fossil cut is the fire's methane and nitrous oxide, about 5 t CO2e.
Per kg of towel or bed sheet
- Power: 319,506 / 172,800 = 1.85 kWh x 0.675 = 1.25 kg CO2, Scope 2
- Wood: 480,000 / 172,800 = 2.78 kg x 13.4 MJ = 37.2 MJ
- Wood methane and nitrous oxide: about 0.07 kg CO2e, Scope 1
- Fossil total about 1.32 kg CO2e a kg; biogenic CO2 about 4.2 kg, shown separately
Grid at CEA's FY 2025-26 factor. Wood at 3,200 kcal a kg from the report, with IPCC 2006 defaults of 112,000 kg CO2, 30 kg methane and 4 kg nitrous oxide per TJ and AR5 warming potentials of 28 and 265. Estimates; mill energy only, not cotton or yarn.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads your electricity bills and invoices into monthly records with CO2 for the power, and keeps supplier evidence for a buyer's Scope 3 request. It has no wood factor, so keep wood tonnes beside the figure, with the biogenic line worked as above.
- Scope 3 supplier evidence
- Solapur textile cluster: wood and carbon
- Terry towel carbon footprint per kg
- Efficient chulha for dyeing: wood saved
Sources: BEE, Detailed project report: energy efficient boiler (600 kg/hr), Solapur textile cluster (2010, SAMEEEKSHA), GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy, Table 2.3, CEA CO2 Baseline Database, version 22.0
Last reviewed 2026-11-01. Unit figures are from a 2010 BEE SME programme report; units have changed since. Use your own bills and wood invoices for a buyer.