French court orders TotalEnergies to add customer-use emissions to due-diligence plan

A Paris judicial court has ordered TotalEnergies to add emissions from customers using its oil and gas products to its duty-of-vigilance plan, a ruling that expands how French courts can apply corporate climate-risk law.

The decision gives the company six months from notification to revise the plan and sets a new hearing for January 2027 to review the updated version.

The case turns on Scope 3 emissions, the indirect greenhouse gases generated when customers burn fuels sold by the company. TotalEnergies had argued that those emissions were outside its control.

What the court decided

The court said TotalEnergies must account for customer-use emissions in its due-diligence document under France’s 2017 duty-of-vigilance law.

That law requires large companies to identify and prevent serious human-rights, health and environmental harms linked to their operations and supply chains.

The ruling is being watched closely because it extends the law into climate accountability in a way that could shape future cases.

It does not order TotalEnergies to stop producing oil and gas or to halt new fossil-fuel projects.

The judges also did not grant the broader emissions cuts sought by the plaintiffs.

Instead, the immediate legal obligation is to revise the vigilance plan so that it reflects downstream emissions in the company’s risk mapping and mitigation measures.

How the case developed

The lawsuit was brought by Notre Affaire à Tous, Sherpa and France Nature Environnement, together with the City of Paris.

The dispute has been a test of whether France’s duty-of-vigilance law can reach climate harms that occur after a company’s products leave its direct control.

Hearings in the case opened in Paris on February 19, 2026.

Reporting on the ruling emerged on June 25, 2026, with AP confirming the decision early in the day and later coverage from Le Monde and the Financial Times describing the same six-month deadline and January 2027 follow-up hearing.

The legal fight

TotalEnergies has said climate change is a global risk and that it does not control how customers use its products.

The Paris prosecutor’s office sided with the company during the case, arguing that the duty-of-vigilance law does not extend to climate change.

The court’s ruling rejects that narrow reading in this case and has been described by multiple outlets as the first time the French duty-of-vigilance law has been applied to climate change in this way.

That makes the decision especially important for disputes over Scope 3 emissions, which are central to corporate climate accountability but harder to manage than emissions from a company’s own facilities.

Why it matters

The ruling could influence how French courts treat downstream emissions in future climate cases, and it may be cited in similar litigation elsewhere in Europe.

For TotalEnergies, the next step is procedural but important: the company must update its plan within the court-ordered deadline and return to court in January 2027 with a revised version.

The plaintiffs may still press for broader climate measures if they believe the updated plan remains inadequate.

For now, the decision creates a new legal obligation without imposing the production limits or project restrictions that campaigners had sought.