TotalEnergies to account for customer emissions after Paris court ruling

Court ruling

A Paris judicial court has ordered TotalEnergies to account for greenhouse gas emissions generated when customers use its oil and gas products, forcing the company to update its duty-of-vigilance plan within six months.

The ruling focuses on Scope 3 emissions, the category that covers emissions linked to the use of sold products rather than only emissions from a company's own operations.

Judges said those emissions must be included in TotalEnergies' due-diligence plan, along with the related risk map and mitigation measures.

The decision is being treated as the first time France's 2017 duty-of-vigilance law has been applied to climate change in this way.

The court stopped short of the broader remedies sought by the plaintiffs. It did not order TotalEnergies to cut oil and gas production or to halt new fossil-fuel projects.

How the case reached court

The lawsuit was filed in 2020 by environmental groups Notre Affaire à Tous, Sherpa and France Nature Environnement, together with the City of Paris.

The case moved through years of legal argument over how France's duty-of-vigilance law should apply to climate risk and to emissions tied to the sale and use of fossil fuels.

The Paris climate trial opened in February 2026, after the dispute had already become a closely watched test of the law's scope.

France's duty-of-vigilance law, adopted in 2017, requires large companies to identify and prevent serious human-rights, health and environmental risks in their operations and supply chains.

The plaintiffs argued that TotalEnergies could not limit its vigilance plan to direct operational emissions because the company also contributes to climate change through the combustion of the fuels it sells.

What the judges ordered

The court said TotalEnergies must revise its vigilance plan to reflect customer-use emissions in the risk mapping and in the measures designed to address them.

It gave the company six months to complete the update once the ruling is formally notified.

The judges also set a follow-up hearing for January 2027, when the revised assessment is expected to be reviewed.

That hearing gives the court another opportunity to examine how TotalEnergies translates the ruling into a concrete plan.

For now, the order is narrower than the most aggressive remedies sought by campaigners, but it still pushes the company to acknowledge downstream emissions in a formal compliance document.

TotalEnergies' defense

TotalEnergies had argued that climate change is a global issue beyond the scope of the duty-of-vigilance law and that it cannot control how customers use its products.

The Paris prosecutor's office had previously backed that reading, saying the law should not be interpreted as covering climate change.

The court's ruling went in the opposite direction on the central issue and required the company to include Scope 3 emissions in its plan.

TotalEnergies said after the verdict that it is satisfied with the ruling and pointed to its existing efforts to reduce emissions from its own operations.

Why the ruling matters

The case could shape how French companies describe and manage downstream emissions in mandatory vigilance plans.

It also gives climate litigants a possible route to push major fossil-fuel companies to address emissions beyond their own direct operations.

For TotalEnergies, the ruling creates a near-term obligation to rewrite part of its climate risk framework even though the court did not impose production limits or project bans.

The judgment also tests the legal boundary between corporate responsibility for direct operations and responsibility for emissions generated when customers burn fossil fuels.

That makes it a potentially important reference point for future climate litigation in France and, possibly, beyond.

What happens next

TotalEnergies must file a revised plan within the six-month deadline set by the court.

Observers will be watching whether the company adds concrete Scope 3 risk-mitigation measures or seeks to narrow the ruling's scope.

The January 2027 hearing is the next formal checkpoint in a case that has become a test of how far France's vigilance law can reach on climate accountability.

For now, the ruling marks a significant step in French climate litigation: a major oil and gas company has been ordered to account for the emissions created when people use the products it sells.