Quick Take

TotalEnergies: Paris Court Enshrines Fundamental Connection between Climate Risks and Human Rights

July 15, 2026

On June 25, the Paris Judicial Court found TotalEnergies liable for breaching the Duty of Vigilance Law. This was the first ruling to confirm that climate risk falls within the scope of corporate human rights due diligence, in part because they “constitute[] a serious, present and future threat to the enjoyment of human rights,” and the first to find a company liable for failing to meet its climate obligations under the law. The judgment also suggests oil and gas companies, and potentially, by extension, any company whose customers generate significant emissions using its products, can no longer treat those downstream emissions as someone else’s problem. As Europe and the eastern half of the US confront extraordinary heatwaves, the ruling reshapes how businesses should think about the role of climate risk in human rights due diligence.

France’s 2017 Duty of Vigilance Law requires certain large companies to identify, prevent, and mitigate serious violations of human rights and the “health and safety of individuals and the environment.” TotalEnergies included its Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions in its risk assessment, but failed to include Scope 3 emissions—the indirect emissions generated when customers use the company’s oil and gas products. For fossil fuel producers, these emissions account for by far the largest share of their carbon footprint.

In 2020, three French environmental organizations, Notre Affaire à Tous, Sherpa, and France Nature Environnement, filed suit alleging that TotalEnergies’ vigilance plan was inadequate. The City of Paris joined the suit because, as Paris Deputy Mayor Alice Timsit said, “we are experiencing first-hand the impact of climate change on a densely populated, urban metropolis.” This is only the latest case in a growing trend of climate litigation targeting major corporate emitters.

The Court ruled not only that the Duty of Vigilance law requires climate-related planning, but also that TotalEnergies’ vigilance plan must address its Scope 3 emissions because identifying them “forms part of the prevention of serious human rights violations.” The Court found a strong causal link between the company’s production and the consumer’s emissions, saying the only purpose of extracting oil is its combustion, and because TotalEnergies “has the means to influence its end customers’ emissions.”

The court ordered TotalEnergies to revise its due diligence plan within six months to identify and address these downstream climate risks, then resubmit its revised plan to the Court for reassessment. Notably, the Court stopped short of ordering the company to reduce fossil fuel production or align its business model with the Paris Agreement, focusing on strengthening the company’s due diligence process rather than prescribing specific steps.

This judgement is significant for several reasons:

It is the first judgement to confirm that climate change risks fall within the scope of the Duty of Vigilance Law, reinforcing that addressing them is a legal obligation rather than voluntary good practice, and the first to find a company had failed to meet its climate-related obligations under the law.
It makes clear that companies cannot automatically exclude downstream impacts from their due diligence. The Court rejected TotalEnergies’ argument that customer-use emissions fell outside its responsibility, introducing instead a two-part analysis to determine whether Scope 3 emissions should be included in a vigilance plan, based on (1) the strength of the causal link between the company’s production and the consumers’ emission, and (2) the company’s ability to influence the consumers’ emission.
It explicitly ties climate risk to human rights risk. The judgement specifically endorses the chain of causation between greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, and threats to human rights.
It stops short of prescribing business outcomes. The ruling suggests that courts may increasingly require robust climate risk assessment and management while leaving companies discretion over how they respond.

The judgement reflects a reality already playing out in global supply chains. Extreme heat is no longer simply an external climate concern; as our recent report, Too Hot to Ignore: Extreme Heat in Global Supply Chains, shows, it is both a human rights issue for workers and an operational risk for businesses.

The Judgement’s Reach
While the judgment directly concerns an oil and gas company’s obligations under the French Duty of Vigilance Law, its implications extend further. First, the Duty of Vigilance law applies to a range of companies headquartered inside and outside of France. Second, as EU Member States will transpose the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive into national law, national courts will be tasked with determining what constitutes sufficient due diligence. The French Court’s ruling may suggest a path other courts will also take. As a result, businesses should begin reviewing whether their own due diligence processes adequately capture environmental risks across their value chains.

Companies should consider three priorities:

Expand due diligence beyond direct operations. Identify, assess, and manage climate-related impacts arising across the value chain, including downstream impacts. Companies should not assume that these risks fall outside their responsibility simply because they occur after a product leaves their direct control. But due diligence should not stop at better processes—where significant risks are identified, companies should take appropriate action to mitigate them and improve outcomes.
Break down internal silos and integrate climate and human rights governance. Climate risk and human rights risk are increasingly intertwined, requiring closer collaboration between legal, sustainability, climate, procurement, and human rights teams.
Treat legal compliance as the starting point, not the finish line. Notwithstanding the delays and narrowing of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), the TotalEnergies judgment is a reminder that courts may interpret corporate human rights due diligence obligations broadly. Businesses should view emerging legal requirements as a baseline and build due diligence systems capable of anticipating expanding judicial expectations.

This isn’t over
The Court ordered TotalEnergies to publish a new vigilance plan within six months. The new plan must include an expanded climate risk assessment and mitigation plan, and the Court will assess the adequacy of that plan with a hearing scheduled for January 2027.

As record-breaking heatwaves expose the growing human consequences of climate change, the ruling signals that courts increasingly expect companies to treat climate risk as an integral part of human rights due diligence—not just as a separate environmental issue, and not just a box to check once and forget.

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