French energy group Totalenergies (formerly Total) has been accused of misleading the public about its true emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2.

The French branch of Greenpeace makes this accusation in a 66-page report that it published in the run-up to the world climate conference in Egypt, which begins on Sunday.

The environmentalists want to use it as a basis to put the spotlight on the company's "cynicism" and "hypocrisy".

Niklas Zaboji

Economic correspondent in Paris

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Totalenergies actually emitted more than 1.6 billion tons in 2019 instead of the officially reported 455 million tons.

That would be far more than triple.

Greenpeace speaks of an "immense discrepancy" that raises the responsibility of Totalenergies for the "climate crisis" and the "already incredible climate strategy of the group and its ambitions to become CO2-neutral by 2050 crumble".

According to their own statements, the environmentalists' research was based on the fact that the British energy company Shell sells significantly more oil and gas than Totalenergies, while the French have significantly lower CO2 emissions.

They then spent eight months reconstructing the company's value chains from extraction to sale of its products, thereby recalculating its greenhouse gas emissions.

"At least questionable"

Greenpeace calls the unearthed figures an "estimate" that they do not claim to be accurate to the kilogram.

However, the deviation from the known figures is so serious that the French financial market supervisory authority has been called in.

"These new estimates of Totalenergies' true climate impact and its misleading communication of its zero-net 2050 commitments (which is already the subject of a lawsuit) may expose criminal inconsistencies, inaccuracies and omissions," the organization said.

The energy giant is defending itself, as it has done with comparable allegations: offensively.

"The Greenpeace report follows a methodology that is at least questionable," he writes in a first press release published on Thursday.

The environmental protection organization performs calculations that do not take into account the integration of total energies along the oil and gas value chains, and therefore counts the emissions associated with the combustion of the products in each value chain multiple times.

From the group's point of view, Greenpeace's figures do not match up front and back.

"Such reasoning applied to all companies that produce, transport, refine, trade or sell fossil products would lead to a total emission that is many times the annual global CO2 emissions," writes Totalenergies.

It would be responsible for more than 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas, which obviously does not reflect its 1.5 to 2 percent market share in the sector.

In the public eye

The press release, in which Totalenergies emphasizes that it has adhered to the industry-specific methods for emissions reporting, has a little more than 6000 characters of text including many numbers.