Paris court orders TotalEnergies to put customer emissions in its vigilance plan

On 25 June 2026 the Paris Judicial Court ruled that TotalEnergies SE breached the French duty of vigilance law by leaving the emissions from the burning of its oil and gas out of the risk mapping in its published vigilance plan. It was the first ruling on the merits in the case, six years after it was filed, and the first time a French court has held that climate risk sits inside the 2017 statute at all.

The court ordered the company to supplement its vigilance plan within six months, adding what are known as Scope 3 emissions, meaning the greenhouse gases released when customers burn the products the company sells, to both the risk mapping and the mitigation measures attached to it. Those downstream emissions account for close to 90 per cent of the company's carbon footprint. The court reasoned that the company retains leverage over them, rejecting the argument that they belong solely to the motorist or the household. It listed the case again for 21 January 2027, when it can order further measures if it judges the revised plan inadequate. Five claimants, Notre Affaire a Tous, Sherpa, Zea, France Nature Environnement and the City of Paris, were each awarded 20,000 euros under the procedural cost provisions.

The law in question is the loi sur le devoir de vigilance, adopted in 2017 and written into the French Commercial Code. It requires large French companies to publish a plan identifying serious risks to human rights, health, safety and the environment arising from their own operations, their subsidiaries, and the suppliers and subcontractors with whom they have an established commercial relationship, and to set out measures to address them. The statute was drafted after industrial disasters in company supply chains. Whether it reached a diffuse global harm such as climate change had never been settled by a French court on the substance.

Two arguments were put against that reading and both failed. The Public Prosecutor's Office argued that climate change is a worldwide phenomenon and, in the words TotalEnergies later quoted, is "a matter for everyone, but essentially a responsibility of the international community of States". TotalEnergies argued separately that even if climate risk were covered, emissions from its customers fall outside a duty aimed at a company's own chain of production. The court accepted neither, holding that Scope 3 emissions form part of the climate related risks arising from the company's activities.

The claimants did not win the orders they had asked for. Notre Affaire a Tous, Sherpa, Zea, France Nature Environnement, Les Eco Maires and a group of French local authorities, joined by the City of Paris as intervener, had sought an injunction requiring the company to align with a 1.5 degree pathway, to cut hydrocarbon production and to stop developing new oil and gas projects. The court refused all of it, finding that prescribing a production trajectory exceeded what the duty of vigilance law authorises a judge to impose. What the claimants obtained is a disclosure and planning obligation with a return date, not a cap on output.

The route to the judgment was long. The case was filed at the Nanterre Judicial Court on 28 January 2020, after a formal notice served on the company in June 2019. Jurisdiction was contested and confirmed, the matter moved to Paris in February 2022, and on 6 July 2023 a pre trial judge dismissed it on procedural grounds. The Paris Court of Appeal partially reversed that dismissal on 18 June 2024, which is what allowed the merits hearing to proceed.

TotalEnergies responded on the day of the judgment by welcoming the rejection of the injunctions, noting that the court had declined to prohibit new projects or order production cuts, and said the duty of vigilance law "is not intended to hold the companies concerned responsible for the risks related to climate change resulting from all human activity". It said it would supplement the plan using material already in its sustainability reporting. On 27 July 2026, following a board decision, the company lodged an appeal against the judgment, arguing again that climate change falls outside the statute, that the law does not reach the conduct of customers over whom a company has no control, and that the European corporate sustainability due diligence directive likewise excludes customer activities. The matter now goes to the Paris Court of Appeal.

Alice Timsit, a deputy mayor of Paris, said that for the first time a judge had recognised that climate risks fall within the duty of vigilance of large companies. Anne Stevignon of Notre Affaire a Tous said the judgment sends a clear message that fossil fuel companies are responsible for all of their emissions. The appeal means the point is not yet final in French law, and the January 2027 hearing will test what a court will accept as an adequate plan.