Paris court finds TotalEnergies misled consumers on carbon neutrality, orders 180 days of notice

On 23 October 2025 the 34th chamber of the tribunal judiciaire de Paris held that TotalEnergies SE and TotalEnergies Electricite et Gaz France had committed misleading commercial practices by telling consumers that the group's ambition was "to contribute to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050" and "to be a major player in the energy transition while continuing to meet the energy needs of populations". The decision carries the case number RG 22/02955 and is signed by the presiding judge, Laure Aldebert, and the clerk, Alice Lefauconnier. The claim was brought by Greenpeace France, Notre Affaire a Tous and Friends of the Earth France, supported by the environmental law group ClientEarth, which describes the ruling as the first time a court has found an oil major's net zero narrative unlawful under consumer law.

The operative part is specific. The two companies were ordered to stop publishing the offending text on www.totalenergies.fr within one month of notification, after which a provisional penalty of 10,000 euros for each day of delay runs for up to 180 days. They were ordered to place on the home page of that site, above the fold and in a box of at least 468 by 120 pixels, a heading reading "DECISION OF THE JUDICIAL COURT OF PARIS" in Verdana capitals at size 14, followed by a blue hyperlink to a PDF of the operative part, and to keep it there for 180 uninterrupted days. They were ordered to pay each of the three associations 8,000 euros for non-pecuniary damage, plus 15,000 euros in total under article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Provisional execution was excluded for the publication measure.

The ruling is also much narrower than the headline suggests. The court worked through a directory of communications compiled by the defendants themselves, numbered from 1 to 40 in exhibit 35, and found only communications 1, 2 and 3 to be misleading, all of them drawn from the commercial site published by the retail arm. Communications 1 and 2 were no longer accessible by the time of judgment. Only communication 3, then sitting in the "Our sustainable development approach" section, had to be taken down. The associations' claims about fossil gas and agrofuels were dismissed outright, the court holding that those messages were not directly related to the promotion, sale or supply of a product to consumers, and it declined to decide whether they were misleading at all. Claims framed as ecological damage under article 1252 of the Civil Code also failed.

The parties do not agree about what happened. ClientEarth called the outcome a historic win against greenwashing and its lawyer, Jonathan White, said backing new fossil fuel projects while claiming to be part of the transition "comes at a tried-and-tested legal price". Jones Day, which acted for the TotalEnergies companies, published an account headed "Paris Judicial Court Dismisses Most of NGOs' Claims", counting three misleading communications out of 44, and argued the judgment confirms that France's Climate and Resilience Law reaches advertising tied to sales rather than corporate institutional communication. TotalEnergies said on 24 October 2025 that it would not appeal, that most claims had been dismissed, and that it would replace the three offending paragraphs with a factual description of its strategy in order to "dispel any doubts among its customers".

The legal footing was ordinary consumer law, not climate law: articles L 121-2 and L 121-3 of the Consumer Code, which implement the 2005 Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. The court noted the additions made by Directive 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition, which had not yet taken effect, as evidence of the European legislature's intention to combat misleading environmental claims. The evidence was assembled slowly: a commissioner of justice recorded the websites on 20 January 2022, and screenshots dated 4 October 2024 were added later.

The contrast with Australia is sharp. In Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility v Santos Ltd [2026] FCA 96, delivered on 17 February 2026, Justice Markovic dismissed every greenwashing claim, holding that "clean" was used comparatively rather than absolutely, that hydrogen terminology had no settled meaning across 2020 to 2021, and that Santos had reasonable grounds for its 2040 net zero target when it was announced.

What is not yet known is whether the Paris notice was actually posted, and when, because publication was not provisionally enforceable and the daily penalty only bites after notification. Nor is it known whether French consumer regulators will use the reasoning, or how the same wording would fare once Directive 2024/825 is in force. With no appeal, there will be no appellate ruling on the boundary the court drew between corporate speech and commercial practice.