“All the signals are in the red. To get out of this and keep the increase in global temperature below 2°C, the Paris Agreement must absolutely be respected…With this lawsuit, we want to force a major energy player to respect the Paris Agreement,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said in a statement.

TotalEnergies said in a statement it regretted the litigation, adding that it viewed its commitment to renewable energy and electricity as “a much more efficient response to the climate challenge than litigation”.

The legal action that started in January 2020 uses a 2017 French law requiring major French companies to draft vigilance plans to prevent environmental damage.

The coalition wants a judge to order TotalEnergies to “take the necessary measures to drastically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and align itself with the objectives of the Paris Agreement”, in a move that it said would be “similar to the Shell decision in the Netherlands”...

Some 16 local authorities and six NGOs – including Notre Affaire a Tous, Sherpa and Amnesty International France – have now joined the TotalEnergies lawsuit.

A judge could rule on the case “at best in March 2023”, Jeremie Suissa, the head of NGO Notre Affaire a Tous said.