Paris court orders TotalEnergies to add Scope 3 emissions to vigilance plan

The Paris Judicial Court ruled on June 25 that TotalEnergies must disclose the climate risks tied to emissions from its oil and gas products — including Scope 3 emissions from end users' combustion of its fuels — and revise its statutory vigilance plan within six months to address them, applying France's 2017 duty of vigilance law to climate risk for the first time. The court stopped short of ordering production cuts or binding emissions targets sought by the NGO coalition (Sherpa, Notre Affaire à Tous, France Nature Environnement, and the City of Paris), but its reasoning — that "extracting, refining and marketing a barrel of oil inevitably leads to its combustion" — establishes that value-chain emissions fall within vigilance-law scope. For law firms advising energy and heavy-industry clients under French vigilance law or the incoming CSDDD, this is the clearest signal yet that vigilance plans must engage with downstream emissions, not just direct operational impacts, and that courts will treat inadequate Scope 3 treatment as an actionable gap rather than a voluntary disclosure choice. TotalEnergies has said it is reviewing its legal options while committing to update its plan.