On most Paris nights, the Salle Pleyel concert hall hosts music stars. Recently, however, it has also become the site of a less weighty annual spectacle – the showdown between environmentalists and shareholders of French oil company TotalEnergies.
Last month, activists were sprayed with tear gas by police as they tried to organize a sit-in at the annual investor meeting. Banned last year, Total’s junior shareholders managed to get in, but to a flood of cheers. “I don’t care,” says one contributor, responding to a protester’s outburst over the need to save the planet.
Witnessing the exchange, these two camps seem to be more at odds than ever. To see such a short default on climate concerns is staggering. But protesters also know what gets clicks. Clips of such encounters are doing well on social media – and this encounter has been followed by turmoil at meetings of other shareholders, including those of Shell and BP in Britain.
“We are facing two parties who are not interested in dialogue,” says Jean-Michel Gauthier, a professor at HEC Business School who worked at Total two decades ago.
“Activists are living up to their role, sounding the alarm, saying it (the energy transition) must be accelerated,” Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne told reporters.
This warmth towards environmentalists contrasts with the government’s attitude towards demonstrators who took part in recent mass protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms.
But it also underscores the growing pressure on the fossil fuel industry. Companies such as Total are finding it increasingly difficult to justify the pace of their green transitions.
Total’s CEO, Patrick Pouyanne, is known for his outspokenness. He struggles to grasp how his very rational vision of a world still tied to oil, which will need time to focus on cleaner energy, is not shared by activists.
And, as on the morning of the shareholder meeting, he bemoaned “doomed accusations of greenwashing” in a speech. Outside, some demonstrators aimed directly at him, shouting: “Boyannih, chicken.”
Total’s investment in wind farms, solar energy and other forms of new energy is no nonsense. This year, the company raised its budget for renewable energy investments to $5 billion, out of total investment spending of between $16 billion and $18 billion, compared to $4 billion in 2022. But this stance aroused less enthusiasm among investors than their counterparts in the United States, who clung firmly to their oil and gas roots, while not really moving public opinion.
“From an equity perspective, Total doesn’t trade at the level of its US peers, yet it still gets pelted with eggs and tomatoes on the street,” says Gauthier.
The group started to respond. In one ongoing case, Total has sued Greenpeace in France for a symbolic €1 in damages over a report on its emissions, which the company says was misleading.
Last month, French newsletter La Lettre A had an insider’s guide Total produced for its employees, giving them tongue-in-cheek advice on how to survive dinner parties. The company says the document was intended to help employees respond to regular disagreements.
These include the $10 billion Lake Albert oil project, and a related pipeline that will pass through Uganda and Tanzania — a red line for those who advocate an end to new oil developments, and a frequent outburst of protests.
“Obviously, companies can’t get out of fossil fuels in just one day. It’s very simple when it comes to launching new ventures,” says Ann Fleur Juul, a 26-year-old activist who also works in climate consultancy at Deloitte.
Gul sparked an interest of her own last year, when she helped organize an open letter to Total from more than 800 students and graduates, all of whom said they would never work for the company, because of the Ugandan pipeline. She feels their response on the matter, was, as always, “defensive and condescending”.
Next year, it seems inevitable that television cameras will line up at dawn outside shareholder meetings of Total and other oil groups. In the meantime, though, having more conversations wouldn’t go wrong.
sarah.white@ft.com