Has TotalEnergies dumped the Paris Agreement?
The French energy major spends billions on low-carbon energy but its net zero target was a legal liability. Both action and ambition must reflect energy transition uncertainty.
The clue is in the name. French oil supermajor Total rebranded to TotalEnergies in 2021. This repositioned it as an old and new Energies chameleon. I have worked a lot with Total. The French are proud to have hosted the Paris Agreement and this is a legacy they cherish. So why have they dropped net zero 2050?
What many people do not realise is that the Paris Agreement and net zero 2050 are not the same thing. The agreement itself does not say net zero or 2050. Those commitments arrived later, along with Greta Thunberg and a wave of investor-led ESG pressure. And now we are seeing the pendulum swing back.
The original Paris text (Article 4.1) calls for rapid reductions to “achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.” This ‘net’ balance means that if we overshoot the Paris temperature goals of 1.5–2°C then we will need to remove emissions. In my view that is inevitable, and it’s why Carbon Capture and Storage, and Direct Air Capture technologies will be essential; in addition to myriad new ways to stop current emissions growth.
The Paris goal is to achieve “global peaking” as soon as possible and net zero in the “second half of the century”. The second half is between 2050 and 2100. I was lucky to chat to Christiana Figueres, UN’s COP21 top negotiator, at a Shell event in The Hague. Christiana explained over dinner how the text’s broad language was agreed to reach consensus. That flexibility recognised the needs of different countries. This is why China’s 2060 net zero target and India’s 2070 target are both Paris compliant. TotalEnergies is too.
But we should not forget “as soon as possible” on limiting temperature. My fellow Scot, and esteemed Imperial College colleague, Professor Sir Jim Skea is chair of the UN panel which assesses climate science. Jim gave a keynote speech in the Great Hall at Edinburgh Castle. The walls there display historic swords, armour and pole-axes. But it was Jim’s advice on emissions cuts I most remember. Jim co-led the UN Special Report on 1.5°C and cautioned that we should not see that as a doomsday cliff edge. Nor should we assume that 1.5°C would avert climate harm. Every fraction of a degree matters above or below 1.5°C.
At the time of Paris, 4°C of warming by 2100 was projected. Today the range bends under 3°C. We are also running off the 1.5°C cliff edge desperately trying to build our energy transition bridge to safety. I have been showing the EU Copernicus data to people for years. The trend was unstoppable. It now shows the three-year global temperature average has passed 1.5°C. Which brings me back to TotalEnergies.
A couple of weeks ago I was speaking on a panel for a French bank, and stayed on to see Aurélien Hamelle, who leads strategy and sustainability at TotalEnergies. This was the same week he was fielding questions on the company’s regulatory bind: “We cannot adopt a net zero transition plan according to European regulations, because such a plan has to be aligned with 1.5 degrees.” Speaking to Aurélien, it was clear to me that his company is not ruling out 1.5°C. No single company decides that. Something else was amiss.
TotalEnergies has been put in a weirdly contradictory position. On one side, a judicial tribunal in Paris upheld a misleading advertising claim against their use of “ambition to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050”. At the same time, a coalition of 14 cities aims to legally force Total to align its activities with 1.5°C. Ironically, the group of cities includes Paris. This legal paradox is the climate equivalent of damned if you do or don’t. This is the background to the European regulations bind which caused TotalEnergies to drop net zero 2050.
The European Union’s political schizophrenia acts like its Copernicus 1.5°C overshoot does not exist. It is demanding companies follow its ESRS E1 reporting standard, which is not fully defined. This at a time when Brussels is in turmoil over its level of climate ambition, in the current permacrisis. Reported net zero plans have to be compatible with 1.5°C, but what compatibility will finally mean in practical terms is guesswork. The Europeans are trying to adapt to a non-linear, resilient energy transition. The Omnibus package scaled back its deluge of data requirements by 70%. And it adopted the lower end of 90-95% reduction by 2040.
I empathise. The energy transition will be a squiggle not a straight line. Total is navigating that future. It is investing in it too. It has 34 GW of installed renewable capacity. This compares to the solar capacity in The Netherlands, European leader in solar per capita. Total invested $3.5 billion in low carbon energy in 2025. It announced a $2.2 billion Asian tie-up with UAE’s Masdar, looking to double that JV’s 3GW capacity by 2030. A company walking away from net zero does not commit that capital. But with the pivot in US offshore wind, changes to renewables economics (just ask Ørsted), sharing financial risk helps.
Let’s test the company on its absolute emissions too. It targets 40% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 vs 2015. It has reached 33 MT in 2025, down from 46 MT and ahead of schedule. Methane emissions are down 65% since 2020. The TotalEnergies CEO, Patrick Pouyanné, was a champion of cutting methane emissions when I chaired OGCI, and was key to the Oil and Gas Decarbonisation Charter.
Admittedly, for all major energy companies, Scope 3 emissions is a harder question, especially for net zero in 2050. TotalEnergies’ Scope 3 emissions are the Scope 1 of steel, cement, shipping, aviation, trucking, aluminium, and chemicals industries. These so-called hard-to-abate sectors are responsible for a third of global emissions. Those industries are also constrained by affordability, energy security and the physics of industrial heat. How can any energy company outpace its own customers or society in general?
We are right to hold all of these companies to account. The litmus test is whether we measure not just where a company is, but also appreciate how fast it moves, especially when compared to the rest of society. Responsible energy security, affordability, and profitability are not obstacles to energy transition. Those conditions make it last.
INSIGHTS
Pure play renewables was heralded, but resilient integrated models work beyond oil and gas. TotalEnergies has a diverse mosaic of energies in its portfolio. Even its low carbon portfolio include 68% solar, 21% onshore wind and 5% offshore. Add those to oil, gas and petrochemicals and the risk of any one concentration is diluted. Hydrocarbon cash subsidises new growth opportunities, whether that is solar or EV chargers until they are commercially viable. Total’s return on capital overall was 12.6% in 2025 with its legacy energy businesses supporting the lower 10% return of its integrated power division. That is a sustainable difference. It does not bet the company. It positions it to grow with its new markets. BP recently had to u-turn on its strategy, its CEO admitting that they went “too far, too fast”. There is a new CEO now.
And yet, the EU punishes integrated energy companies. Take, for example, the EFRAG GHG intensity metric which reports emissions per euro of net revenue. An integrated company producing hydrocarbons and renewables reports higher intensity than a pure renewables competitor. This is regardless of energy transition capital deployed. We penalise the business model most capable of financing decarbonisation.
Ørsted failed the test: concentration risk, resilience premium and policy sequencing. Compare Ørsted’s recent history to TotalEnergies. It was lauded as the exemplar of new energy. Then it was caught out by near-zero interest rates and a cost of capital that evaporated [see Energy scenarios for an erratic world insights]. When Ørsted started to haemorrhage money they brought in Andy Brown, a Shell veteran, to make drastic project changes. Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2 developments were cancelled. Sunrise Wind was delayed three years. The darling of offshore wind’s model had failed, writing off at least ~$7-8 billion. Share price fell ~80% from its 2021 peak; also the year of peak-ESG. Sadly, a quarter of its workforce will be cut by 2027.
In an earlier Commentary, I identified three tests for an energy portfolio: concentration risk, resilience premium, and policy sequencing. Ørsted’s story tested all three. There was concentration risk: a single energy technology and dominant expansion focus (US offshore). The resilience premium lesson is that a portfolio optimised across multiple policy and geopolitical scenarios gives you more options. And policy sequencing is there too. US political support for offshore wind disappeared, although it may return just as suddenly. Ørsted had no alternative market or technology to pivot toward when the energy libretto changed mid-performance. [see When the energy libretto changes for more on the three tests].
There remains overshoot delusion and 1.5°C denial which limits our action. The 1.5°C world has gone (for now) and we need to stop the pretence. A “low or no overshoot” world does not exist either. IPCC low-overshoot pathways peak at ~1.6°C around mid-century and return to 1.5°C by 2100 through rapid emissions cuts and moderate carbon dioxide removal. High-overshoot pathways peak closer to 1.8°C in the 2060s, and require large-scale carbon removal to bring temperatures down. Both depend on global emissions peaking around 2025 and then steep declines. We are just not in that world.
The good news is that current policy scenarios suggest that we have reduced future temperatures to around 2.6°C by 2100. It was 3.5–4°C only a decade ago. We are moving from catastrophic to severe outcomes. Our Paris goal of 2°C by 2100 is on our horizon.
Responsible Energy Briefing: When molecules can’t move examines the physical infrastructure chokepoints that define whether energy resilience is achievable. Free to read.