German court rules that TotalEnergies cannot claim that its heating oil is “CO₂ compensated”
In 2022, the German NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) brought a legal case against TotalEnergies Wärme & Kraftstoff Deutschland against the company’s misleading advertising claiming that its fossil fuel products are “CO₂ compensation”.
On 24 March 2023, the Düsseldorf Regional Court upheld DUH’s lawsuit.
DUH argued that TotalEnergies advertised the oil in a way that violated consumer protection law. TotalEnergies claimed that the oil was “CO₂ compensated” because the company bought carbon offsets from projects in India and Peru.
TotalEnergies’ website states that,
“In Germany, 20 million people keep their homes warm with heating oil. Many of you would like to take responsibility for future generations when it comes to climate protection, without giving up your independence or having to accept high costs for energy-related renovation. For this there is premium heating oil thermoplus CO₂-compensated by TotalEnergies.”
For the price of only 1 cent per litre, TotalEnergies claimed that its customers could make their heating oil “climate neutral”.
The Düsseldorf Regional Court ruled that TotalEnergies will have to stop advertising its Thermoplus heating oil as “CO₂ compensated”. The company will also have to list the exact project from which it buys carbon offsets.
The court judgment is the first of 15 legal cases brought by DUH on the basis of CO₂ compensation claims.
REDD project in Brazil Nut concessions in Madre de Dios, Peru
The Düsseldorf Regional Court ruling specifically mentions the REDD project that TotalEnergies bought carbon offsets from: the REDD Project in Brazil Nut concessions in Madre de Dios, Peru.
This project has appeared several times on REDD-Monitor.
In April 2021, REDD-Monitor wrote about how the project was supposed to offset the emissions from creating non-fungible tokens.
In May 2021, REDD-Monitor reported on the illegal gold mining that was taking place inside the project area.
In November 2021, Simon Counsell wrote a guest post based on a report he’d written for the German NGO Foodwatch. Counsell’s report found serious problems with the project and accused the project of generating “verified hot air”.
In May 2022, REDD-Monitor wrote about remote sensing expert Elias Ayrey’s analysis of the project. Ayrey concluded that the project developers “don’t count deforestation when they don’t want to”. He added, “This is cheating”.
In January 2023, REDD-Monitor reported on reporting in the Wall Street Journal that found that the communities living in the area of the REDD project had seen few benefits from the project.
The Düsseldorf Regional Court ruling questions how “greenhouse gases are to be demonstrably saved by supporting 400 families in the sustainable cultivation of Brazil nuts in an area that has been threatened in recent years by illegal clearing in some cases”.
The “carbon neutral” claim relies on the argument that forest protection means climate protection. The Court ruling states that, “This is certainly not wrong in itself, but it does not allow any reliable causality considerations between the climate protection project and concrete ‘savings’ of greenhouse gases to be identified.”
The Court ruling also notes that claims that 400 local families would be granted land rights is not true. “It is undisputed between the parties that insofar as families now hold land use rights, they already had them before the project began.”
Under the ruling, Total will not be allowed to advertise its heating oil as “climate neutral”.
ClimatePartner drops “climate neutral”
The REDD project in Brazil Nut concessions in Madre de Dios is one of the REDD projects featured on ClimatePartner’s website.
On 5 April 2023, ClimatePartner announced a new initiative: “ClimatePartner certified” to replace its previous “climate neutral” label.
In a blog post explaining the launch of the new label, ClimatePartner writes,
“While consumer protection organisations criticise the term ‘carbon neutral’ as misleading, international NGOs are already advising against its use and investing heavily in communicating their position.
“In this context, we are now moving away from using the term ‘carbon neutral.’ ”
DUH calls for consumer protection
In a statement, Jürgen Resch, Federal Managing Director of DUH, states that,
“TotalEnergies was only able to so brazenly deceive consumers because the state and federal governments do not really protect consumers.”
Resch calls on Steffi Lemke, Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection, and to Silke Gorißen, Minister for Agriculture and Consumer Protection in the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen to take meaningful action to protect consumers from claims that an oil heating system can be “climate neutral”.
Resch comments that,
“Once again, the Deutsche Umwelthilfe must protect consumers from the brazen climate fraud of large corporations. Where are the federal and state climate protection ministers when an oil company misleads millions of consumers with the promise with a cent surcharge per litre, an oil heating system can be operated in a climate-compensated manner? Once again we had to end the consumer deception with supposed climate neutrality in court without any support from the actually responsible official bodies.
“This verdict against TotalEnergies, one of the largest fossil companies in the world, will be followed in the coming months by further verdicts for false promises of climate neutrality - also for petrol or other products.”
That is great, that a court makes a ruling on misleading "offsets." Perhaps now the government agencies will start doing the work of protecting the public from these scams. But, it was government agencies that initiated these marketing schemes to begin with. Re NFTs: Trying to market offsets via the NFT route makes no sense - NFTs are for a durable entity, such as digital art; an "offset" should be bought then extinguished when used, it is VERY fungible.