How to Get a Green Loan for a Cement Plant in Pakistan

Published 2026-10-13.

Pakistan's cement industry has more kiln capacity than the country uses, so exports matter. In the year to June 2025, Lucky Cement alone shipped more than 3 million tonnes of cement and clinker by sea, which the company said was a record for itself and for Pakistan, and 42 percent of the country's cement and clinker exports.

Cement is one of the six product groups under the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, and buyers elsewhere are starting to ask about carbon too. The question for a Pakistani producer is how to finance kilns and power that emit less per tonne, and what a lender needs.

Where the carbon is

Most of a cement plant's emissions come from two places: the chemical release of CO2 when limestone becomes clinker, and the fuel burned to heat the kiln. Power for grinding adds more. That gives three levers: less clinker per tonne of cement, less or cleaner fuel per tonne of clinker, and cleaner electricity.

Pakistani producers have already pulled the third lever hardest. Waste-heat recovery turns kiln exhaust into electricity. DG Khan Cement registered a 10.4 MW waste-heat project with the UN's carbon credit mechanism in 2012, and Lucky Cement reports 159.1 MW of waste-heat capacity across its sites and says renewable sources, including wind, solar and waste heat, supply 55 percent of its energy. Those are company figures.

The finance on offer

Pakistan's route to green loans changed in 2024. The State Bank of Pakistan's renewable energy refinancing scheme, which financed more than 4,500 projects, is listed as discontinued from 1 July 2024. Banks now judge green projects against the Pakistan Green Taxonomy, which the SBP has told banks and development finance institutions to reference in their green banking policies, and price them through their normal credit process.

For large producers, that means green or sustainability-linked loans from commercial banks and development lenders. For smaller plants, waste-heat recovery and solar are the projects most likely to fit the taxonomy without argument.

What to prepare

Clinker and cement output by month, with the clinker ratio.
Fuel use by type (coal, alternative fuels) and its calorific value, and electricity bought and self-generated.
A project file for the waste-heat, solar, alternative-fuel or efficiency project, with expected emissions and cost savings and the metering that will prove them.

If you sell to the EU, the importer will need embedded emissions per tonne of clinker or cement, and without actual data it uses EU default values with a mark-up of 10 percent in 2026, 20 percent in 2027 and 30 percent from 2028. See CBAM cost per tonne of cement and try the CBAM calculator. For the general Pakistan loan picture, read how a Karachi exporter gets a green loan.

Confirm current eligibility and terms with the lender before you apply.