Net-Zero Industry: Options for Plastics, Textiles, Automobiles, and Fisheries in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru

This report explores pathways to achieve carbon-neutral industrial production in three major Andean economies: Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. It examines options for achieving net-zero emissions in plastics, textiles, auto manufacturing, and fisheries; four sectors that are likely to play key roles in the economies of the region in the future. The report analyzes the barriers and opportunities to achieve carbon-neutral manufacturing in these countries and sectors in light of existing industrial, energy, and environmental policies, and given the progress that has been achieved so far. The analysis argues that, despite the presence of multiple barriers and challenges to implementation, the prospects for establishing clean manufacturing at scale are promising. Making such transformative changes, however, will require the following conditions: (i) a strategic vision and the underpinning legal authority to champion and achieve a net-zero transition; (ii) vastly increased institutional coordination among diverse government departments to end fragmented policymaking practices; (iii) investments that leverage rapid technological change to build a zero-emissions power grid, and to use low-carbon, synthetic fuels (such as green hydrogen or green ammonia) in industry; (iv) foreign direct investment into the clean-energy-supply sector; (v) regulatory mandates and economic incentives for powerful oil and gas firms to pivot from fossil fuels to synthetic, zero-emission fuels; and (vi) vastly improved waste-management practices to enable a significantly more circular economy that re-uses and recycles materials.