Total AG under pressure from climate activists and government

by time news

2023-05-26 11:33:55

Climate activists came to shout their anger and government injunctions. The general assembly of TotalEnergies opened on Friday May 26, in Paris, in a particular climate.
The Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, called on the oil group to “package” on renewable energies. “Total invests in renewable energies, but the challenge is to go faster, stronger and above all faster”said on franceinfo the Minister, for whom the oil and gas companies “must reinvent themselves, get out of fossil fuels”.

Same tone a little later on the side of the Prime Minister. Elisabeth Borne even seemed to support the mobilization of activists who came to disrupt the General Assembly of the group which they accuse of “green washing”.

“Climate activists are in their role to alert and to say that we must speed up. This is also what the government is doing: we all need to speed up the ecological transition”assured the head of government during a trip to the Côte d’Or, while recognizing the oil giant for having “started its transition to renewable energies”.

These criticisms come as the company holds its annual general meeting of shareholders, in a Parisian concert hall protected since the day before by security guards, barriers and police. At dawn, dozens of demonstrators tried to enter the stretch of street passing in front of the Salle Pleyel, in the beautiful districts of Paris.

Tear gas and arrests

A dozen of them, seated in front of the entrance, were dislodged by the police who ended up throwing tear gas in the middle of the group. The demonstrators nevertheless remained nearby, around a hundred on each side of the section of street, blocked by police and gendarmerie trucks. Four people were arrested, police said.

“The GA must stand”we repeated Friday morning on the side of TotalEnergies, while the first shareholders arrived and returned to the premises in dribs and drabs, greeted by the cries of the protesters.

“Murderers! Criminals! » threw some demonstrators to the shareholders trying to enter the room. “We won’t let them go”assured Marie Cohuet, spokesperson for the Alternatiba association, for whom the company “embodies the worst of what is done in terms of exploitation of people and the planet”. The blockage is organized with other associations, including Friends of the Earth, ANV-COP21, Attac, Greenpeace, Scientists in Rebellion and Extinction Rebellion.

This meeting comes at the end of a stormy GA season, during which actions have multiplied against large groups against a backdrop of staggering profits. Combined, BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and TotalEnergies are posting more than $40 billion in profits this quarter, after a great 2022.

Plexiglas protections 2 meters high

Inside, TotalEnergies banned shareholders and journalists from using their cell phones, forcing them to leave certain personal effects at the entrance. Unheard of, Plexiglas plates with a height of 2 meters have been erected between the stage where the leaders and the public will take place.

About 1.5 million individual shareholders are called to vote twice on the climate. A first vote will concern the group’s climate strategy, which should be adopted. A second, advisory, comes from the activist shareholder organization Follow This, which asks TotalEnergies to align its emission reduction targets with the Paris Agreement (2015), to limit global warming to 1.5 °C.

Controversial project

Even if the group does not plan to significantly reduce its direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions over the decade, it intends to devote a third of its investments to low-carbon energies and reach 100 GW of renewable electricity capacity in ‘by 2030.

TotalEnergies remains present in many liquefied natural gas and oil projects, in the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Papua or Uganda, with the controversial Eacop heated pipeline project becoming a media symbol of the anti-oil fight .

This controversy is in addition to many others for the company, criticized for its record profit of 19 billion euros in 2022, its low taxes in France or the salary of the CEO. A 10% increase in the remuneration of Patrick Pouyanné for 2023 is also on the agenda of the GA.


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