Paris court gives French oil company TotalEnergies 6 months to tighten
its climate policies
[June 26, 2026] By
MOLLY QUELL and SYLVIE CORBET
PARIS (AP) — A court in Paris ruled on Thursday that energy company
TotalEnergies must account for its consumers' greenhouse gas emissions,
giving the French oil giant six months to report the environmental risks
caused by the consumption of its gas and oil products.
The decision, which comes amid a record heat wave in France, fell short
of requests from the climate organizations who brought the lawsuit to
force the company to reduce its oil and gas production.
The court scheduled a new hearing for January to consider TotalEnergies’
new assessment under a 2017 law that requires companies to prevent human
rights abuses and environmental risks. It's the first time that the
so-called corporate duty of vigilance law is being applied to climate
change.
The law is not intended to make companies “responsible for the risks
linked to climate change, which result from all human activity on the
planet since the Industrial Revolution” the court said in a statement,
but rather requests them to act “according to their own situation.”
TotalEnergies expressed "satisfaction" that the court didn’t ban it from
pursuing new oil and gas projects or force it to reduce oil and gas
production.
In a statement, the company said it will update its climate policies
following the ruling. It also said it has expanded development of other
energy sources and reduced emissions of its operations by 28% since
2015.
It's a landmark case for environmental campaigners
Environmental groups Notre Affaire à Tous, Sherpa, ZEA, France Nature
Environnement, together with the city of Paris, launched the proceedings
in 2020.
The groups said that they were happy that the court decided that climate
change was included in the 2017 duty of vigilance law.
“This decision marks a significant step forward, confirming that the
duty of vigilance fully applies to climate risks generated by
multinational corporations,” they said in a statement.
They claim that TotalEnergies is one of the largest historical emitters
of greenhouse gas and asked the court to require the company to reduce
oil production by 37% and gas production by 25% by 2030. The lawsuit
also asked for a halt to all new fossil fuel projects.
Sébastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Center for International
Environmental Law, told The Associated Press that including the effects
of climate change in the duty of vigilance law could set a precedent
across Europe. This legislation “is a key legal path to corporate
accountability,” he said, adding that the French law has “served as a
model for other laws of the same nature in other countries and at the EU
level.”
[to top of second column] |
 Europe is feeling climate change
this week
The court's decision comes as Europe is experiencing a heat wave.
Punishing temperatures extended to the United Kingdom and Spain,
where weather agencies issued red alerts — like France — about the
risks of extreme heat for tens of millions of people.
The Eiffel Tower and the Louvre Museum have been forced to restrict
visiting hours, and school and transportation schedules have been
interrupted across the continent.
Human-caused climate change is tied to increasingly extreme weather,
and U.N. climate agency projections say the next five years are
likely to shatter more heat records.
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures
increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s,
according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Over the last four years, more than 200,000 people across Europe
died from heat-related causes, and most of those deaths were
preventable, the World Health Organization’s Europe office said this
month.
Court cases about the climate are on the rise
The decision is the latest in a series of rulings in climate change
cases. Last year, the United Nations’ top court, the International
Court of Justice, said that countries could be in violation of
international law if they fail to take measures to protect the
planet from climate change. In 2024, the European Court of Human
Rights ruled that countries must better protect their people from
the consequences of climate change.
In 2019, the Netherlands’ Supreme court handed down the first major
legal win for climate activists when judges ruled that protection
from the potentially devastating effects of climate change was a
human right, and that the government has a duty to protect its
citizens.
___
Quell reported from The Hague, Netherlands.
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved
 |
