How can luxury harness technology to craft a more sustainable future?

Kering has recently launched two sustainability funds – the Regenerative Fund for Nature, in collaboration with Conservation International, the target of which is to transform conventional practices into regenerative practices, and the Climate Fund for Nature, with L’Occitane Group, to mobilize finance from the beauty and luxury sector to protect and restore nature. The Climate Fund for Nature is already worth €140m and its target is to reach €300m in 2024. The group also has its own well-established innovation labs, which continually look to develop sustainable materials and products that are still at the highest end of quality. “Our strategy is concrete and operational,” Daveu said.

Touching on the subject of changing consumer attitudes, Daveu identified two types of customers – Gen Z and Millennials, who ask more and more questions about sustainability, the traceability of raw materials and so on, and actively demand change, and the more traditional luxury clients, who may be less vocal, but place their trust in the brand. For both segments, it is essential that sustainability be in your DNA and a genuine imperative. Brand equity can be destroyed in an instant if you get this wrong.

How emerging technologies can accelerate sustainability

Jan Huckfeldt pulled no punches when it came to the need for twofold immediate action – reducing emissions, while also capturing the CO2 that is already in the atmosphere. “Even net zero is a dramatic situation,” he explained. “The last time our planet experienced a CO2 concentration of above 400ppm was three million years ago.Then, temperatures were 3°-5°C higher, the oceans were acidic, and the air was not breathable for humans. We need to pull down the CO2 to get into a safe zone again. By 2050, we need to dramatically reduce our thirst for energy, rely heavily on renewables, and to have removed between five and 15 billion tonnes of carbon. Today, there are insufficient technologies to achieve that.”

“Nature-based technologies are very important, but they are not scalable and they only work on the short carbon cycle. We need to find and develop technologies which lock the carbon away for thousands, if not millions, of years.” Climeworks, which has its first industrial-scale operation in Iceland, does this through direct air capture; it pulls air over a sorbent which selectively captures the CO2. Once the filter containers are saturated, Climeworks uses geothermal heat to isolate the pure CO2, which is then, in consecutive steps, mixed with water and injected into basalt rock hundreds of meters underground, where it mineralizes to calcite (latter step with its partner Carbfix). “What used to be CO2 out in the atmosphere is ultimately turned into stone, locked away.” The challenge is to scale up dramatically, in a very short space of time, and this is where partnerships come in. Climeworks has already partnered with JP Morgan, Microsoft, UBS, BCG, Swiss Re, Audi, and others.

Daveu acknowledged that even with a bold vision and rapidly transforming business models, Kering will still produce some residual emissions. “That’s why we are using carbon credits, but with the highest standard possible. Today at Kering, we are working with more than 250 start-ups to innovate. The biggest challenge is quality. We are in the luxury sector – we have to ensure the highest quality still. A new tech or a new raw material can be challenging because it’s nearly perfect, but it’s not quite perfect.”

More than 90% of impact falls outside Kering’s own operation: 70% is linked to raw material and production – where the leather and silk used in their products is coming from, where the cashmere is produced. The company has set ambitious new targets: to reduce its Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 90%; to reduce its Scope 3 emissions by 70%; and to reduce its absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2035 overall.