Totalénergie “cheated” its clients with their climatic promises? The multinational Petrogazière responded on Thursday in a civil court for accusations of “false ads” transported by several NGOs, a first “green washing” judgment in France for an energy company.
Three NGOs, Greenpeace France, Les Amis de la Terre France and our business to all, assigned to the French group in March 2022 before the Judicial Court of Paris for “deceptive commercial practices” due to the environmental accusations that suggest that the group could reach carbon neutrality while continuing to extract oil and gas.
In the heart of the case is the communication campaign of the group deployed as of May 2021, especially on its website, in the press, on social networks and on television. At that time, Total had renamed totalness to underline their investments in low carbon energies, electricity in particular.
Then, the group showed its “carbon neutrality for 2050”, often added “together with the company”, and praised gas as “the least emitted fossil energy” greenhouse gases. “In total, about forty messages are attacked in court,” false ads “according to NGOs not reflecting” sincerely.
Front, the group disputes the “advertising” or “commercial” nature of these messages that, according to him of “its institutional communication”, supervised by the Securities Market Law and the rules of the authoritative financial ones des marches (AMF), and not by the law of consumers.
“Total Green”
For years, due to a clear framework, companies have communicated abundantly in their environmental policies, claims carbon neutrality or the use of vague terms such as “green”, “lasting” or “ecological.” This led to climatic activists to confiscate justice in an attempt to obtain jurisprudence on “green washing” (eco -resident), to claim to be more virtuous than one is, through the law of consumption.
In Europe, the courts have already set the KLM airlines for ecological construction in 2024, and Lufthansa, last March. But in energy, the energetic Spanish Iberdrola could not have the repsol group of Iberian Iberian condemned, who was prosecuted for having presented “false” environmental information in his marketing communications.
In France, the procedure, based on a European directive related to unfair commercial practices, is not precedent for a hydrocarbon company.
For associations, Totalingie has cheated consumers by showing the “total greengrocer” of their image “, which does not objectively, sincere and transparent as the directive, the reality of their production and its investments”, “,”, “,”, “,”, “,” increasingly more gas, “increasingly gas, which the group presents as an alternative to oil and coal.
Legality of ads
The Court will also underline: “Judge, unprecedented at an international scale, the legality of advertisements that present gas as an essential energy for the transition”, despite their climatic evaluation played by climate experts, due to methane leaks, heating power much for the atmosphere.
Totalnnergies says that “no deceptive commercial practice can be criticized for it.” The group sees in this procedure, with which no consumer organization is associated, a deviation from the consumer law to attack its strategy.
He intends to “expose how communications (…) about his name of name, his strategy and his role in the energy transition are reliable and are based on objective and verifiable data,” said his management, highlighting the company’s progress: “Investments, new shops, significant fall in direct emissions of greenhouse gases …”
The associations in particular ask the Court “to order the immediate cessation under the penalty of deceptive commercial practices”, which would be a “strong signal” towards hydrocarbon companies, according to Apolline Cagnat.
In addition to this civil procedure, other associations attacked with a different legal arsenal, this time in criminal, again for “deceptive commercial practices.” And in this case, Nanterre’s prosecution is investigating.
Source: BFM TV
