TotalEnergies to appeal French ruling on climate business changes
TotalEnergies will appeal a Paris ruling that faulted its climate vigilance plan, including missing scope 3 emissions from fossil-fuel use. The case could widen corporate climate duties far beyond France.
TotalEnergies said it will appeal a Paris ruling that ordered the company to adapt its business to climate change after judges found its vigilance plan fell short under France’s Duty of Vigilance law. The 25 June 2026 judgment gave fresh force to a climate-vigilance case that has moved through French courts since it was filed in 2022.
The dispute, filed as Notre Affaire à Tous et al. v. TotalEnergies SE, was brought by environmental groups under the 27 March 2017 Duty of Vigilance law. The Paris Judicial Court found the company’s plan inadequate in part because it did not include scope 3 emissions, the indirect emissions tied to combustion of the fossil-fuel products it sells.
That detail matters because scope 3 emissions are often the largest share of a fossil fuel producer’s climate footprint. By treating those downstream emissions as relevant to a vigilance plan, the court pushed the case beyond disclosure language and into business strategy, where a company’s future investment and operating decisions can be tested against climate risk.
The ruling has drawn attention from legal and human-rights specialists because it was described by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights as the first to confirm that climate risk falls within corporate human-rights due diligence. That makes the case a possible precedent for other companies facing similar claims, not only in France but across Europe and in jurisdictions where climate litigation is gaining ground.
Notre Affaire à Tous said a hearing on the merits took place on 19 and 20 February 2026 in the Paris Judicial Court, showing how long the case has been building before the June ruling. Sherpa has said the climate vigilance action continued before the Court of Appeals, and the Climate Litigation Database tracks the dispute as decided while identifying proceedings in France’s court system.
For TotalEnergies, the appeal is a direct challenge to a judgment that could force more than a legal cleanup. It raises the possibility that judges, not only regulators or investors, may increasingly decide how far major energy companies must go in aligning their business plans with climate risk.
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