As global negotiators gather in Antalya, Türkiye this week for COP31, industrial electrification is at the center of climate policy. The COP31 Presidency is rallying governments around its “35×35” Global Electrification Pledge, a target to raise electricity’s share of global final energy demand from roughly 20 percent today to 35 percent by 2035.
For prestige beauty brands, that macro policy push maps directly onto a multi-million-euro industrial overhaul already well underway in northern France. Decarbonizing luxury perfume flacons and skincare jars requires solving one of manufacturing’s most challenging energy problems: melting glass without natural gas.
Replacing Gas Furnaces in France’s Glass Valley
Traditional glass furnaces run continuously at approximately 1,500°C and rely heavily on natural gas. Because glass packaging accounts for a substantial portion of a luxury beauty house’s Scope 3 carbon footprint, France’s premier bottle makers (concentrated in Normandy’s Bresle Valley) have begun replacing gas melters with electric systems engineered by French industrial group Fives.
Pochet du Courval: The 400-year-old glassmaker behind iconic flacons such as Chanel N°5 began using France’s first all-electric melter in 2025. It’s a €40 million capital investment that cuts energy consumption per tonne of melted glass by up to half.
Verescence: In Mers-les-Bains, global beauty glassmaker Verescence now operates the world’s first hybrid oxy-gas and electric furnace for cosmetics applications. Engineered to run up to 80 percent on electricity and produce 150 tonnes of extra-flint luxury glass per day, the unit is designed to cut furnace carbon emissions by 70 to 85 percent.
The Grid and Pricing Bottleneck at COP31
While French glassmakers have proven the engineering works, scaling electrified manufacturing across global beauty supply chains faces sharp infrastructure and cost challenges.
Ahead of this week’s summit in Antalya, more than 180 global companies representing over $1.6 trillion in combined revenue, organized through the We Mean Business Coalition, urged COP31 leaders to clear what they termed an “electrification bottleneck.” Corporate procurement teams warned that high industrial electricity prices, slow grid connections, and permitting delays are stalling factory transitions even when private capital is ready to deploy.
What It Means for Beauty Procurement
Even without official U.S. federal participation at COP31, European climate regulations, central bank green lending rules, and conglomerate net-zero targets continue to push industrial electrification forward.
For packaging buyers, this creates two immediate realities: low-carbon prestige glass is now commercially scalable in Europe. At the same time, supplier costs increasingly hinge on local grid capacity and clean power contracts, making energy infrastructure a direct factor in luxury packaging prices.
Featured image: Paul Harrison (cropped), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
