As the Cop27 climate summit starts this weekend in Egypt, French President Emmanuel Macron has invited large French companies for a meeting to encourage them to accelerate the reduction of their carbon footprints. This comes as Greenpeace accuses French oil and gas company TotalEnergies of grossly underreporting its own emissions.
Macron has invited representatives from about 50 of France’s largest – and most polluting – industrial companies for a meeting at the Elysée palace next week to discuss reducing their emissions, while also encouraging them to keep their operations in France.
According to France Info radio, Macron intends to reassure companies like TotalEnergies, Lafarge and Saint Gobain that the state will support them in the face of rising energy costs, while providing incentives to rapidly develop greener energy, like green hydrogen.
The goal is to encourage these companies to continue operations in France rather than leaving for other countries with fewer environmental regulations.
Emissions 'underreported'
Meanwhile, Greenpeace France said on Wednesday that TotalEnergies, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers, significantly underreported its carbon emissions in 2019.
The environmental campaigner said that using publicly available production and trading data, it found that TotalEnergie’s carbon emissions in 2019 were nearly four times higher than it had stated.
Greenpeace France said TotalEnergies' core activities had generated around 1.64 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2019, while the company reported 455 million tons in its own carbon balance.
"While it is impossible to know what volumes TotalEnergies minimises or excludes from its reporting, it is clear that the group massively under-reports scope 3," Greenpeace France said, referring to indirect emissions across the value chain.
TotalEnergies has challenged Greenpeace’s figures, calling it's methodology "dubious".
"Greenpeace is making calculations that do not take into account the integration of TotalEnergies all along the oil and gas value chain," the company said in a reubtal statement.
The campaign group is "therefore counting several times emissions linked to the combustion of products on each value chain".
Greenwashing accusations
TotalEnergies has been trying to rebrand by branching out into renewables and emphasising a shift away from carbon-centred activities, which has lead to accusations of greenwashing from Greenpeace and others.
TotalEnergies has pledged to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, which Greenpeace France oil campaigner Francois Chartier said is “downright unrealistic” in view of the new estimates.
Climate activists and some investors have criticised the company for continuing to invest in oil and gas projects, like its planned East African Crude Oil Pipeline and its liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique.
Greenpeace France has filed a complaint with a French court accusing TotalEnergies of false advertising by stating its climate ambitions while investing in new fossil fuel projects.
It said it flagged its findings on its carbon emissions reporting to French market regulator AMF.
(with wires)
