TotalEnergies Appeals Ruling Requiring Scope 3 Emissions in Climate Plan

TotalEnergies has appealed a 25 June 2026 Paris Judicial Court ruling that found the company's duty of vigilance plan incomplete for failing to include Scope 3 emissions, those generated when customers burn its oil and gas products, in its climate risk mapping. The court had ordered TotalEnergies to update its plan within six months to incorporate these emissions, while explicitly rejecting the plaintiffs' demands for binding production cuts, bans on new oil and gas projects, or court-imposed emissions targets. The case, originally filed in 2020 by environmental groups including Notre Affaire à Tous, Sherpa, Zéa and France Nature Environnement alongside the City of Paris, represents one of the first major applications of France's 2017 duty of vigilance law to climate change.

 

What France's Duty of Vigilance Law Actually Requires

 

France's duty of vigilance law requires large French companies to identify and address risks arising from their own activities and those of their subsidiaries, suppliers and subcontractors, covering areas including human rights and environmental harm. The central legal question in this case was whether that vigilance obligation extends to Scope 3 emissions specifically, the indirect emissions produced not by a company's own operations but by the eventual use of the products it sells, in this instance the fuel burned by drivers and other end-users of TotalEnergies' oil and gas products.

The court's ruling drew a careful distinction that matters for understanding what it actually decided. It found the vigilance plan incomplete for omitting Scope 3 emissions from the company's risk mapping and mitigation measures, meaning TotalEnergies must now identify and address that category of risk within its plan. But the judges explicitly declined to go further, stating plainly that the law is not intended to hold companies responsible for climate risks arising from all human activity since the industrial revolution, and that it is not the court's role to set the specific target TotalEnergies should achieve. That distinction between requiring risk disclosure and mitigation planning versus imposing binding performance targets is the crux of what the ruling did and did not establish.

 

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Why TotalEnergies Is Appealing Despite a Partial Win

 

TotalEnergies is appealing even though the ruling rejected the plaintiffs' most far-reaching demands, arguing on two grounds that align closely with the Public Prosecutor's Office's position during the original proceedings. First, the company contends climate change is a global phenomenon falling outside the scope of a law designed to address risks from a company's own value chain, characterising it instead as a responsibility belonging essentially to the international community of states. Second, TotalEnergies argues the law targets risks from its own activities and those of its suppliers and subcontractors, not the activities of its customers, over whose choices the company has no control, illustrating the point by noting it does not decide whether a motorist drives a petrol vehicle, uses biodiesel, or switches to an electric car.

That customer-control argument carries implications well beyond this single case. TotalEnergies further argued that requiring energy, defence, aeronautics or automotive companies to manage risks from how customers use their products would conflict with legal certainty and the freedom to conduct business, and pointed to the EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which does not include customer activities within its scope, as supporting precedent for that narrower interpretation.

 

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Why This Case Matters Beyond TotalEnergies

 

As one of the first major tests of how a corporate due diligence law applies specifically to climate change and Scope 3 emissions, the outcome of this appeal carries significance for how similar vigilance and due diligence laws elsewhere in Europe, several of which are inspired by or similar to the French model, might be interpreted for other companies whose core products generate significant downstream emissions when used by customers. If TotalEnergies' argument that customer-use emissions fall outside a company's vigilance obligations prevails on appeal, it would narrow the scope of climate accountability such laws can impose on fossil fuel, automotive and similar companies. If the lower court's finding stands, it would establish that at least Scope 3 risk mapping and mitigation planning, short of binding targets, falls within these companies' legal obligations.

 

What Happens Next

 

The appeal does not automatically suspend the lower court's order, meaning TotalEnergies must still submit a revised vigilance plan ahead of a review hearing scheduled for January 2027, even as the broader legal question proceeds through the Paris Court of Appeal. The company has previously indicated it would comply by incorporating relevant information from its existing sustainability reporting, including its efforts to help customers reduce emissions through biofuels, electricity and lower-carbon product offerings. Whether the Court of Appeal upholds, narrows or expands the lower court's findings on Scope 3 risk mapping, and whether that outcome establishes a precedent other companies and climate litigants look to as similar due diligence laws take effect across Europe, will shape how corporate climate accountability litigation develops well beyond this single case.