Total Accused of ‘Sly Propaganda’ in Clash Over Net Zero Claims

(Bloomberg) -- TotalEnergies SE was accused of using “sly propaganda” for allegedly misleading the French public by boasting that it would achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Environment group Greenpeace argues in a suit filed at a Paris court on Wednesday that Total's 2021 rebrand into TotalEnergies violated European rules that ban misleading and unfair commercial practices directed at consumers.

TotalEnergies is trying “to convince us of the impossible: that carbon neutrality can be reached while producing and selling ever more fossil fuels,” Clara Gonzales, legal counsel at Greenpeace France, said in a statement on the case. Its advertising “acts as a smokescreen for the harm it is causing to the planet.”

Big Oil is increasingly under rising pressure from investors and activists to reduce emissions and abandon new fossil production projects. In a landmark ruling last year, Shell Plc was ordered by a Dutch court to slash its emissions harder and faster than planned. While the company is appealing, the decision is expected to have a ripple effect on European peers.

TotalEnergies said in a statement that it's wrong to claim that its strategy “is tantamount to ‘greenwashing.'” The company said it's “concretely” carrying out the objective it set itself to reach net zero carbon emissions in 2050.

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The lawsuit is likely to kick off an exchange of written arguments between the claimants, Greenpeace France, Friends of the Earth France and Notre Affaire A Tous, and TotalEnergies. It should also lead to a public hearing in Paris.

The case follows an advertising campaign that TotalEnergies rolled out after investors backed its net zero objectives last year.

According to those plans, Total aims to reduce emissions from its worldwide operations -- known as scope 1 and 2 -- by 40% by 2030, and achieve net-zero by 2050. It's also set a target to curb scope 3 emissions -- emissions from its customers such as motorists -- in Europe by 30% by 2030, and eliminate them entirely on a net basis in the region by mid-century.