(AFP / CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT)
TotalEnergies is refusing to appeal the cancellation of its proceedings brought against Greenpeace after the dissemination of a report from the NGO which accused the major of underestimating its carbon footprint, AFP learned on Thursday from the group.
“TotalEnergies has decided not to appeal the decision of the pre-trial judge of the Paris judicial court of March 28, 2024 who considered that the action initiated by TotalEnergies (…) was not admissible for purely procedural reasons”, indicates the group’s press release to AFP.
In April 2023, the oil major sued the NGO for “dissemination of misleading information” to the stock markets after the publication, at the end of 2022, of a Greenpeace report carried out with an analysis firm, Factor-X.
In this report, Greenpeace, on the basis of these analyses, estimated that TotalEnergies’ real greenhouse gas emissions for the year 2019 were four times greater than what the multinational announced.
As a listed company, “we cannot let anyone say anything (…) since this amounts to directly deceiving investors”, argued the company, which denounced “a questionable methodology”.
The subpoena opened the way to an unprecedented debate on the group’s complex and controversial methods of accounting for greenhouse gas emissions. The legal discussion will ultimately not take place.
For the group, “the pursuit of legal proceedings is not justified when there have since been 4 annual publications from the company on its greenhouse gas emissions”.
“TotalEnergies does not wish to enter into a procedural debate even though the judge also considered that its action was not abusive,” the company also commented.
In his order, the magistrate had deemed TotalEnergies’ action inadmissible due to a “lack of details”, which would have been likely to prevent the NGO and Factor-X from “usefully defending themselves on the merits”, a argument supported by Greenpeace.
On the other hand, the judge did not follow the NGO’s other argument which assimilated TotalEnergies’ action to an “abusive procedure”, in other words a “gag procedure” intended to hinder its freedom of expression.
“This procedure was nothing more than an attempt at intimidation which will not succeed,” Clara Gonzales, a lawyer at Greenpeace, told AFP.
In its press release, TotalEnergies reiterated that “Greenpeace’s publication contained false or misleading information.”