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French energy giant TotalEnergies has been found guilty of greenwashing by a Paris court. Environmental advocates are calling this a historic decision for climate accountability. The ruling marks the first time a major oil and gas company has been convicted for misleading the public about its environmental commitments.
The court found that TotalEnergies’ 2021 communications campaign, which promoted its ambition to reach “carbon neutrality by 2050, together with society,” violated consumer protection laws by presenting a misleading picture of the company’s ongoing expansion in oil and gas production.
Environmental groups Greenpeace France, Friends of the Earth France, and Notre Affaire à Tous hailed the ruling as “a major legal precedent against climate misinformation”.
TotalEnergies, formerly known as Total, rebranded itself in 2021 to signal a transition toward renewable energy like wind, solar, and biofuels, while maintaining its core fossil fuel business. The campaign emphasized the company’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality and described natural gas as “the fossil fuel with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions”.
Environmental organizations argued that such language concealed the true scale of the company’s fossil expansion. This includes new projects in Africa and the Middle East, and presents an image of environmental progress inconsistent with its activities.
“This is the first time anywhere in the world that a major oil and gas company has been convicted for misleading the public by greenwashing its image,” said Greenpeace France in a statement.
The court ordered the removal of around 40 promotional messages related to carbon neutrality and the energy transition, while dismissing complaints about statements concerning gas and biofuels.
The conviction is expected to reverberate beyond France. Lawyer Johnny White of ClientEarth called the ruling a signal to the global energy industry: “It puts oil and gas companies on notice that claiming to be ‘net zero by 2050’ while expanding fossil fuel production is misleading.”
The court’s decision follows similar rulings against airlines such as KLM and Lufthansa, whose sustainability campaigns were found to have overstated the environmental benefits of flying.
At the June hearing, TotalEnergies’ lawyer Clémentine Baldon argued that the communications were “institutional” and aimed at investors rather than consumers. She described the case as “an exploitation of consumer protection laws to attack company strategy”.
TotalEnergies maintains it has not engaged in misleading practices and called the court’s approach “simplistic”.
While “greenwashing” is not explicitly defined under French law, this civil case, filed in 2022, shows a European trend of courts using consumer protection frameworks to hold companies accountable for environmental claims.
In recent years, judges in the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom have increasingly ruled against corporations accused of overstating their climate commitments.
Legal experts say the TotalEnergies case will reshape how corporations advertise environmental goals, with regulators likely to demand clearer definitions of what “net zero” and “carbon neutrality” truly mean. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: TotalEnergies’ logo.
