Burberry Delays Net Zero Target to 2050 as Luxury Giants Soften Climate Pledges

Burberry has quietly knocked a decade off the urgency of its climate plan, becoming the latest FTSE 100 heavyweight to soften the green pledges that defined corporate Britain at the start of the decade.

In its 2025-26 annual report, the trench coat maker confirmed it now expects to hit net zero emissions “no later than” the 2049-50 financial year, a full ten years later than the 2039-40 deadline it set with great fanfare in 2021. Back then, the Riccardo Tisci-era management team promised to go further still, declaring Burberry would be “climate positive” by 2040 and insisting it was “helping protect our planet for generations to come”.

Four years on, the language is markedly more sober. The Macclesfield-based group described the rewritten target as a “pragmatic response to external factors”, while arguing the new timetable still reflected its view of climate change as “a principal risk” to the business. Translation: the City wants margin recovery, the supply chain is not decarbonising as quickly as anyone hoped, and Washington has stopped pretending to care.

From outlier to the herd

Burberry is hardly alone. Unilever, owner of Dove and Marmite, used its 2024 strategic reset to dilute a string of ethical commitments, including the pace at which it weans itself off virgin plastic. Nestlé walked away from the Dairy Methane Action Alliance last year, taking the air out of one of the food sector’s more ambitious decarbonisation coalitions. And the two London-listed oil majors, BP and Shell, have spent the past eighteen months unpicking renewable energy targets in favour of a frank return to barrels and cubic feet.

The political weather, of course, has shifted with them. President Trump’s return to the White House has emboldened US-listed peers to pare back ESG disclosures, and stock market investors – tired of paying a “virtue premium” on shares that have lagged the index – are pushing UK boards in the same direction. As I argued recently in my column on why UK businesses must not retreat from net zero in 2026, the danger is that short-term capitulation in the boardroom papers over a hard cost when capital markets, customers and regulators inevitably swing back.

What burberry actually said

In the small print, Burberry insists the revised goal takes account of the “observed and projected speed and scale of decarbonisation” across the luxury industry and in the economies in which it operates. The group also reiterated a near-term commitment to deliver “significant emissions reductions” by 2030, a deadline that still falls within the current chief executive’s likely tenure and remains broadly consistent with the Science Based Targets initiative’s 1.5°C pathway.

For sustainability professionals, that 2030 milestone is the one to watch. A 2050 long-stop date is now table stakes; the credibility test is what happens in the next 1,825 days.

The schulman turnaround – and the £12.2m question

The climate rewrite lands in the middle of a delicate turnaround under Joshua Schulman, who became chief executive in 2024 and has used aggressive marketing, sharper price architecture and an unapologetic return to the brand’s British heritage to steady the ship. Shares are up roughly 17 per cent over the past twelve months, although they remain a long way below the peaks of 2023.

Schulman’s reward for the recovery, also disclosed in the annual report, is a new long-term incentive plan that could lift his total package to as much as £12.2 million in future years, subject to share price and performance hurdles. Coming in the same document as a softer climate pledge, the optics are uncomfortable – particularly for investors who recall that Burberry recently warned it would cut 1,700 jobs in a global savings drive amid the wider luxury slowdown.

The SME angle

There is a longer-tail story here for the small and mid-sized firms that make up Burberry’s supplier base, and the wider FTSE 100 ecosystem. When a flagship brand stretches its decarbonisation runway, the Scope 3 pressure on tier-two and tier-three suppliers eases – at least on paper. In practice, the regulatory ratchet is moving in the opposite direction, with the new UK Sustainability Reporting Standards bedding in from this financial year. As we have flagged previously, SMEs face a widening net zero divide as 2026 reporting rules loom, and the businesses that mistake a softer corporate mood music for permission to pause investment may find themselves locked out of supply chains within two reporting cycles.

For now, Burberry’s message to the City is straightforward: ambition, yes, but on terms the market – and the share price – can live with. Whether that proves to be pragmatism or short-sightedness will be judged not in 2050, but well before the next general election.

Jamie Young

Jamie is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, bringing over a decade of experience in UK SME business reporting.
Jamie holds a degree in Business Administration and regularly participates in industry conferences and workshops.

When not reporting on the latest business developments, Jamie is passionate about mentoring up-and-coming journalists and entrepreneurs to inspire the next generation of business leaders.