TotalEnergies produced enough oil and gas since Paris Agreement to cause half a million heat deaths

TotalEnergies likes to think of itself as a supporter of sport. It was an official sponsor of the 2023 Rugby World Cup, and of the 2023 African Cup of Nations. It wanted to sponsor the 2024 Olympics, which kick off this week, but following calls by Paris’ Mayor for environmentally friendly Games, the company withdrew.  

Now, new analysis from Global Witness reveals that instead of supporting the Paris 2024 Olympics, TotalEnergies has been making a growing contribution to the climate crisis that is making cities like Paris hotter and events like the Olympics more dangerous for athletes and fans.   

Athletes and fans at the Paris Olympics have been enduring serious fossil-fuel induced heat, as temperatures hit 36C degrees several days into the games. The heat was no surprise to many.

Athletes from around the world have been raising the alarm about the dangers of training and performing in extreme heat for months prior to the Games, and the President of World Athletics recently warned that “climate change should increasingly be viewed as an existential threat to sport”. 

TotalEnergies, headquartered in the 2024 Olympics host country, has produced enough oil and gas to send 2.6 billion tonnes of planet warming CO2 emissions into the air since the Paris Agreement was adopted.  

That has made the planet hotter – and using a methodology which combines modelling from Columbia University and TotalEnergies’ production, we estimate that emissions from their production (from 2016 to mid-2024), could cause 578,000 excess heat deaths by the end of the century. That’s equivalent to more than one-quarter of the population of Paris.  

Sarah Biermann Becker, Investigator at Global Witness, said: “TotalEnergies is putting lives at risk and making sporting events like these Olympics more dangerous for athletes and fans. Trying to sponsor sports while continuing to expand fossil fuels is two faced.  

But the tables are starting to turn. Athletes are distancing themselves from an industry that is shattering the planet and with it the things people love like sports. If TotalEnergies truly wants to support sports, the best thing it can do is to leave fossil fuels in the ground and pay for the damages it has already caused.” 

The estimates are based on a high-emissions scenario, assuming a business-as-usual world in which we only pursue the climate policies in place right now. Columbia’s research also offers a lower emissions scenario, which models what would happen if the world gets to net-zero emissions by 2050. In this case, the heat deaths associated with emissions from TotalEnergies’ production would be reduced to 274,000 deaths.  

Currently, TotalEnergies and other fossil fuel companies have explicit plans to expand oil and gas production which will increase emissions. So long as they do that, the planet will keep getting hotter, and people will keep dying from extreme heat caused by burning fossil fuels.  

Heat related stress was visible at Tokyo’s Games in 2021 as athletes vomited and fainted at finish lines. Tennis player Daniil Medvedev even raised the fear of dying on court during a match. This summer athletes from 206 countries and territories have gathered in Paris - the city most at risk of heat related deaths in Europe. As dangers have mounted, athletes have been speaking out.  

Rhydian Cowley is an Australian race-walker and Olympian - Paris is his third Olympics. He suffered heatstroke in 2023 in Budapest, despite rigorous training for extreme heat. Cowley told Global Witness that ‘’extreme heat is the biggest risk during Paris... Extreme heat also poses a real health risk to spectators, especially those staying in non-airconditioned accommodation should there also be very warm nights - this is how heatwaves act as silent killers in vulnerable populations.” 

Cowley suffered heat stroke during a 2023 35km race in Budapest, telling Global Witness he was ‘’unable to finish, and required medical observation for a period afterwards”. Asked if fossil fuel companies should be held accountable, Cowley said “the burning of fossil fuels is the primary driver of climate change. Fossil fuel producers have known this for decades, and yet at almost every turn have acted to slow progress away from a fossil fuelled global economy - indeed they are trying to make societies even more addicted to fossil fuels."  

Cowley called on the International Olympic Committee to act on sportswashing:  

It would be preferable if sports organisations voluntarily moved away from these sponsorships, but if governments and organisations like the IOC are serious about their role in responding to the climate crisis, a ban on fossil fuel companies sponsoring clubs, organisations and events should be considered.”  

Fossil fuel companies like TotalEnergies have long used events like the Olympics to try to ‘sportswash’ their reputations. But this tactic is now under attack. The 2024 Olympic host committee explicitly committed to “fossil fuel free” Games. Athletes are speaking out against the industry and its sponsorship of sports. And beyond sport, calls are mounting for the profiteers of climate breakdown to pay their dues.  

A recent report concluded a series of hearings in the French Senate of TotalEnergies’ business. The report recommended exploring possibilities for fossil fuel companies to contribute to a loss and damage fund, which aims to support recovery from damages caused by climate change. Unless TotalEnergies changes course, those damages will continue to mount.  

Responding to requests for comment TotalEnergies said that it does not agree with Global Witness’ inclusion in this analysis of Scope 3 emissions, namely the emissions arising from burning the oil and gas it produces. It said that it believes this represents a “fundamental bias” when apportioning responsibility for those emissions, including as relates to the role of public authorities, other companies and customers.  

TotalEnergies said that an approach which only takes into account scope 3 emissions (emissions arising from using their products), rather than scope 1 emissions (the direct emissions from the company’s facilities), “would make all companies in the world collectively responsible for several thousands of times the greenhouse gases actually emitted on the planet”. 

TotalEnergies also said that it does not acknowledge the “mortality cost of carbon” methodology used in this analysis. The company added that it had set ambitious near-term emission reduction objectives for 2025 and 2030, on the path to its 2050 Net Zero ambition, “together with society.” 

NOTES ON OUR METHODOLOGY 

• The data on forecast oil and gas production was sourced from energy business intelligence agency Rystad Energy’s UCube database. UCube is an integrated field-by-field database of the global upstream oil and gas market, covering the time span from 1900 to 2100. Rystad’s data is widely referenced by major oil and gas companies, the media and international bodies such as the IEA.  

• The mortality cost of carbon in the baseline emissions scenario, developed by Daniel Bressler, predicts 0.000226 deaths between 2020-2100 per metric tonne of CO2 emitted in 2020. That means that 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide added in 2020 will cause an additional 226 excess temperature-related deaths over the next 80 years. Baseline emissions scenarios typically examine what would happen in the absence of further intervention beyond the climate policies already in place. The model’s baseline emissions scenario is a high emissions scenario, which results in 4.1C warming by 2100 compared to preindustrial temperatures. A lower emissions scenario, based on the assumption that the world reaches net zero in 2050, results in a mortality cost of carbon of 0.000107 deaths between 2020-2100, per metric tonne of carbon emitted in 2020. 

• The model used to calculate the mortality cost of carbon is published in a peer reviewed journal, Nature Communications. It is one of the measures used to calculate the “social cost of carbon”, which assesses the monetary cost of the damages to society of one additional metric tonne of CO2 emissions. The social cost of carbon is a widely used measure, including by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The methodology has also been used by organisations such as Oxfam to calculate heat related excess deaths associated with the top 1% richest people’s emissions.  

• This analysis of excess heat deaths is an approximate estimate. The model is based on the effect of additional emissions had they all occurred in 2020. We use a wider range of emissions for the period 2016 to mid-2024.  

• Production data for TotalEnergies in the period from 2016 – 2024 were exported from Rystad Energy’s UCube database on 25th June 2024. We halved the production volume for 2024 to account for only half of 2024. Production was converted to CO2 emissions using the European Investment Bank’s Carbon Footprint Methodologies.   

• The heat deaths methodology does not account for other causes of death due to climate change, such as infectious disease, conflict, food supply and flooding.