- TotalEnergies will appeal a French judgment requiring its corporate vigilance plan to address Scope 3 emissions from customers using its oil and gas products.
- The court ordered a revised plan within six months but did not impose production cuts, prohibit new projects or set a binding emissions target.
- The appeal could determine whether France’s duty-of-vigilance law becomes a mechanism for scrutinising the transition strategies of major emitters.
TotalEnergies will appeal a landmark French court judgment requiring the company to assess and mitigate climate risks arising from the use of the oil and gas products it sells.
The ruling late last week by the Paris Judicial Court found that climate change fell within the scope of France’s 2017 corporate duty-of-vigilance law. It ordered TotalEnergies to update its vigilance plan within six months to include Scope 3 emissions generated when customers burn its products.
The company confirmed on Monday that it would take the case to the Paris Court of Appeal. It argues that the law was intended to address risks arising from a company’s own activities and supply chain rather than a global phenomenon driven by the choices of customers and wider society.
TotalEnergies said that making energy, defence, aviation or automotive companies control risks resulting from customers’ use of their products would be inconsistent with “legal certainty and freedom to conduct business”, according to Reuters.
The judgment is narrower than some descriptions of it suggest. Judges did not prohibit TotalEnergies from developing new oil and gas projects, require it to reduce hydrocarbon production or impose a specific emissions-reduction target. The court instead required the company to identify Scope 3 risks and set out measures intended to mitigate them.
TotalEnergies initially said it would supplement the plan using information from its sustainability reporting. Its response to the judgment noted that customers’ emissions also depend on decisions such as buying electric vehicles, installing heat pumps or switching to biofuels.
The company has set a target to reduce the lifecycle carbon intensity of the energy products it sells by 25% between 2015 and 2030. It says operational greenhouse-gas emissions have fallen by 28% since 2015, while methane emissions have declined by 65% since 2020.
The campaign groups that brought the case, including Sherpa, Notre Affaire à Tous and France Nature Environnement, argue that customer emissions account for almost 90% of TotalEnergies’ carbon footprint. They say excluding those emissions would leave its vigilance plan disconnected from the main climate impact of its business.
The court is scheduled to review the revised plan in January 2027. If it concludes that the measures are inadequate, it could consider further orders, although the form and extent of any intervention remain uncertain.
The immediate judgment concerns risk mapping and corporate planning rather than a court-directed production strategy. If upheld, however, it would place the adequacy of an oil major’s response to Scope 3 emissions under continuing judicial scrutiny.
European climate litigation has produced uneven results. A Dutch court ordered Shell in 2021 to reduce group-wide emissions by 45% by 2030, but the Hague Court of Appeal overturned the target in 2024. The case reached the Netherlands Supreme Court in May 2026, where judges are considering whether the appeal ruling applied the law correctly.
The French proceedings could therefore clarify where courts draw the boundary between corporate responsibility and government policymaking. Requiring companies to account for customer emissions may strengthen transition planning without directly dictating output. Moving from disclosure to enforceable business restrictions would be a much larger step.
For other European energy companies, the central risk is not that the initial decision automatically creates a continent-wide production mandate. It is that vigilance and duty-of-care laws may give judges a recurring role in testing whether corporate climate plans are credible, comprehensive and proportionate to the emissions produced by the underlying business.
The appeal will decide whether that role expands or whether the judgment proves to be another high-profile climate ruling whose practical effect narrows at the next stage.
