By Innocent Edemhanria
On 23 October 2025 a Paris civil court found that TotalEnergies made “misleading commercial practices” by advertising ambitions such as being “carbon neutral by 2050” and “a major actor in the energy transition” while continuing to expand oil and gas activities. The decision is widely viewed as a landmark precedent applying France’s anti-greenwashing rules to a major oil company and signals rising legal risk for sustainability advertising that is not tightly aligned with corporate activities and credible pathways.
Three NGOs, Friends of the Earth France, Greenpeace France and Notre Affaire à Tous, brought the case arguing that TotalEnergies’ public communications (website text and institutional messaging) gave consumers the false impression that buying or using the company’s products supported a low-carbon transition, despite the company’s plans to maintain or increase fossil fuel production. The NGOs were supported by ClientEarth and relied on international scientific reports from International Energy Agency (IEA), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to argue the company’s messages were inconsistent with pathways to meet Paris Agreement goals.
The court specified three types of statements that had to be removed. The claiming to “be a major actor in the energy transition”, an ambition “to become carbon neutral by 2050 together with society” and claims that it “places sustainability at the heart of its strategy” and will provide “more energy, less emissions.” The Judges referenced IEA and other scientific findings (including recommendations to stop developing new oil and gas fields) and concluded that Total’s broad references to the Paris Agreement, without clarifying the expansion of oil and gas, created a false impression of alignment. The court then ordered removal of the statements and the publication of a link to the judgement on the homepage for 180 days, payment of €8,000 to each NGO and €15,000 for legal fees and threatened fines for non-compliance (reported up to €10–20k per day depending on reporting).
The ruling matters as it was the first time a global oil major was held liable in court for “greening” its corporate image; it therefore sets a legal and reputational precedent other jurisdictions and activist litigants will watch. It is also part of a broader European trend as courts in Europe have increasingly judged consumer-facing environmental claims as subject to strict consumer-protection rules (cases against airlines such as KLM and Lufthansa are examples). As a result, regulators and environmental justice campaigners are now intensifying scrutiny of corporate sustainability messaging.
Interestingly, the ruling increases both legal and communications risks for any oil and gas company that uses broad “net-zero” or “we are part of the solution” messaging while their core business continues to rely on or expand fossil-fuel production. Key implications are that advertising and institutional communications are liable. Even “institutional” website messaging and branding (not just ads) can be treated as commercial statements subject to consumer protection laws. Companies cannot assume immunity because a message is labelled “institutional.” The courts will now test whether stated climate ambitions are credible in light of the company’s actual capital allocation, production plans and investments as reflected in the company’s policy document including annual reports. Public claims that imply alignment with Paris goals will be scrutinised against independent scenarios. Disclosure expectations are rising as regulators and courts will expect transparent, granular disclosures (capex guidance, production forecasts, and scope-by-scope emissions strategies), not only high-level net-zero targets. From the example of TotalEnergies, courts can now order content removal and corrective publication and impose daily fines for non-compliance, these are measures with reputational spillover.
There are lessons from the case. Oil and gas companies should now take practical steps to reduce legal and reputational risk when making climate-related claims. They should tighten claims to what can be substantiated and avoid broad, consumer-facing statements that imply the company’s products are consistent with delivering the Paris goals unless there is clear, documented evidence from capex shift, investment and production trajectory, and credible third-party validation. Companies should align strategy, capital allocation and disclosure. They should publish granular transition plans (short-, medium-, long-term milestones) and link target achievement to measurable corporate actions. It will also be important to strengthen substantiation and third-party assuranceand maintain contemporaneous decision records showing how communications reflect underlying strategy.They should avoid messaging that could be read as an inducement to buy or as implying product-level low-carbon performance unless evidence supports it.
There are examples of other major oil & gas companies that face similar green-claim or “transition narrative” risks. ENI is being sued by Greenpeace Italy, ReCommon and private citizens for alleged “lobbying and greenwashing”, the claim is that despite its public narrative around energy transition, the firm has been significantly expanding fossil-fuel developments and knew about climate risks since the 1970s. The litigation alleges ENI misused its transition narrative while continuing business as usual in oil & gas, raising the same kind of tension that the TotalEnergies case flagged (i.e., “net zero” + growing fossil activity). Repsol also faced a claim brought by Iberdrola accusing it of “unfair competition and deceptive advertising through greenwashing” focusing on its public campaigns about advanced biofuels and hydrogen. Though not yet public in the same kind of judicial penalty as the TotalEnergies case, this suggests the geographic scope of risk includes Iberian jurisdictions and that product-level claims (biofuels/hydrogen) are also under scrutiny. In 2019, the NGO ClientEarth filed a complaint with the OECD against BP over its “Keep Advancing” and “Possibilities Everywhere” advertising campaigns, arguing they misled consumers about how much the company was shifting from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy. Though not a court-judgment like the TotalEnergies case (at least publicly), BP’s example shows how regulatory, NGO and watchdog pressure builds even when corporations are global majors with supposedly “transition” strategies. It emphasises that IOCs need to align their corporate communications with underlying investment/production realities or face reputational/legal consequences.
The Paris court’s decision against TotalEnergies has clear and immediate relevance for Nigeria. While the French ruling targets corporate communications and the risk of deceptive sustainability messages, Nigerian jurisprudence has so far more commonly addressed direct environmental harms (such as oil spills and gas flaring) and the infringement of constitutional rights to a healthy environment rather than “greenwashing”. Comparing the Paris judgment to Nigerian decisions suggests two direct implications for policymakers and regulators. The first is to expand the regulatory lens beyond pollution to corporate communications by strengthening consumer-protection and advertising laws (or their enforcement) so that misleading claims about climate performance can be challenged in domestic courts. Secondly, harmonise evidentiary benchmarks by demanding that climate and transition claims be supported by measurable, auditable indicators mirroring the scientific references relied upon by the Paris court.
Conclusively, the Paris court’s October 2025 ruling against TotalEnergies makes clear that ambitious climate rhetoric is now subject to judicial and consumer-protection tests as companies will be held to account where messaging appears to promise climate alignment while core business practices diverge. For IOCs, the path forward is not to abandon transition ambitions but to make them precise, demonstrably aligned with corporate strategy and transparently caveated. Doing so protects reputation, lowers litigation risk, and helps rebuild public trust in corporate climate commitments.
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Edemhanria, ANEEJ programmes manager writes from Benin City.
