PARIS (AP) \u2014 A court in Paris ruled on Thursday that energy company TotalEnergies must account for its consumers\u2019 greenhouse gas emissions, giving the French firm six months to report the environmental risks caused by the consumption of its gas and oil products.<\/p>\n
The decision, which comes amid a record heat wave in France<\/a>, fell short of requests from the climate organizations who brought the lawsuit to force the company to reduce its oil and gas production.<\/p>\n The court scheduled a new hearing for January to consider TotalEnergies\u2019 new assessment under a 2017 law that requires companies to prevent human rights abuses and environmental risks. It\u2019s the first time that the so-called corporate duty of vigilance law is being applied to climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n The law is not intended to make companies \u201cresponsible for the risks linked to climate change, which result from all human activity on the planet since the Industrial Revolution\u201d the court said in a statement, but rather requests them to act \u201caccording to their own situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Environmental groups Notre Affaire \u00e0 Tous, Sherpa, ZEA, France Nature Environnement, together with the city of Paris, launched the proceedings in 2020. <\/p>\n The groups said that they were happy that the court decided that climate change was included in the 2017 duty of vigilance law.<\/p>\n \u201cThis decision marks a significant step forward, confirming that the duty of vigilance fully applies to climate risks generated by multinational corporations,\u201d they said in a statement. <\/p>\n They claim that TotalEnergies is one of the largest historical emitters of greenhouse gas and asked the court to require the company to reduce oil production by 37% and gas production by 25% by 2030. The lawsuit also asked for a halt to all new fossil fuel projects. <\/p>\n S\u00e9bastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, told The Associated Press that including the effects of climate change in the duty of vigilance law could set a precedent across Europe. This legislation \u201cis a key legal path to corporate accountability,\u201d he said, adding that the French law has \u201cserved as a model for other laws of the same nature in other countries and at the EU level.\u201d <\/p>\n The court\u2019s decision comes as Europe is experiencing a heat wave. Punishing temperatures extended to the United Kingdom and Spain, where weather agencies issued red alerts \u2014 like France \u2014 about the risks of extreme heat for tens of millions of people.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Sign up for Morning Wire: The Eiffel Tower and the Louvre Museum have been forced to restrict visiting hours, and school and transportation schedules have been interrupted across the continent. <\/p>\n Human-caused climate change<\/a> is tied to increasingly extreme weather, and U.N. climate agency projections say the next five years are likely to shatter more heat records<\/a>. <\/p>\n Europe is the world\u2019s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union\u2019s Copernicus Climate Change Service. <\/p>\n Over the last four years, more than 200,000 people across Europe died from heat-related causes, and most of those deaths were preventable, the World Health Organization\u2019s Europe office said this month.<\/p>\n The decision is the latest in a series of rulings in climate change cases. Last year, the United Nations\u2019 top court, the International Court of Justice<\/a>, said that countries could be in violation of international law<\/a> if they fail to take measures to protect the planet from climate change. In 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that countries must better protect their people from the consequences of climate change<\/a>. <\/p>\n
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