TotalEnergies challenged on carbon emissions reporting

TotalEnergies is facing accusations of vastly underestimating its carbon emissions, as scrutiny intensifies over how the oil and gas industry reports on climate change goals.

In a study based on the French energy group’s own disclosures, campaign group Greenpeace estimates that Total’s carbon emissions from 2019 could be almost four times higher than the levels disclosed by the company and that some excluded activities should be included in its reporting.

Greenpeace, which said it had applied emissions standards used by French state environmental agency Ademe to Total’s operational figures, found that the company was responsible for 1.6bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in that year, compared with the 455mn tonnes reported.

It said it had flagged its findings, which have not been independently verified, to French market regulator AMF.

Total rejected Greenpeace’s methodology and said the group was double-counting some of its activities. The AMF declined to comment.

The report comes as Total and competitors Shell to BP publish increasing information about their emissions as part of pledges to address the role of the fossil fuel industry in climate change. It has escalated debate about the underlying assumptions used by companies in one of the world’s most polluting industries.

Greenpeace said it had reviewed Total’s disclosures as part of its efforts to probe companies’ pledges to reach net zero emissions by 2050. The campaign group said it had found discrepancies between the way emissions produced by Total’s crude oil business were estimated and its own calculations.

It estimated that Total’s 2019 emissions linked to crude oil sales and trading reached 610mn tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, or more than what the company reported across its entire business.

“We do not have all the underlying data. But there are some volumes that are not integrated into Total’s calculations,” said François Chartier, a campaigner for Greenpeace France. “For Total and for other majors these are issues that make targets less credible when companies say they are aligned with the Paris accords.”

Total challenged the methodology, and said the Greenpeace figures were not realistic given the company’s small share of the energy market. The estimates “did not take into account TotalEnergies’ integration along the oil and gas value chain, and therefore count emissions . . . several times over”.

It added that it had deepened its climate disclosures since 2019 — the year assessed by Greenpeace before oil demand plummeted during the coronavirus pandemic.

Greenpeace said Total’s disclosures did not stack up against those of its competitors.

Shell reported greenhouse gas emissions of about 1.6bn tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in 2019, or roughly four times those of Total, when its production and sales of oil products were less than twice as high.

Greenpeace has also targeted Total with a “greenwashing” test case, lodging a legal complaint with a French court this year that accuses the company of advertising campaigns with misleading claims about its climate ambitions when it is still investing in new fossil fuel projects.

The court has yet to rule on whether to pursue the claim.