Total “deliberately made an environmental claim likely to mislead consumers, by leading them to believe that by buying its products or services, they were participating in the emergence of a low-carbon economy,” according to a translation of the court’s decision.
The French court ordered Total to cease those statements within a month or face a fine of 10,000 euros per day [~$11,500], and to display the court’s ruling on its website for 180 days.
The case, filed in 2022 by NGOs Greenpeace France, Friends of the Earth France, and Notre Affaire à Tous, is part of a growing global wave of climate lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. One of the biggest and fastest-growing categories of those lawsuits are cases relating to false climate or environmental advertising, according to a report by Oil Change International and Zero Carbon Analytics last year.