Climate campaigners didn’t sugarcoat their reactions to a Dutch court decision on Tuesday that overturned a landmark 2021 ruling ordering the oil behemoth Shell to cut its planet-warming emissions nearly in half by the end of this decade.
“We are shocked by today’s judgment,” said Donald Pols, director of Milieudefensie, the Netherlands-based environmental group that originally filed suit against Shell in 2018.
“It is a setback for us, for the climate movement, and for millions of people around the world who worry about their future,” Pols said of Tuesday’s ruling by the Hague Court of Appeal. “But if there’s one thing to know about us, it’s that we don’t give up. This setback will only help us grow stronger. Large polluters are powerful. But united, we as people have the power to change them.”
The original 2021 ruling, as CNBC noted, marked “the first time in history that a company was found to have been legally obliged to align its policies with the Paris Agreement” and “sparked a wave of lawsuits against other fossil fuel companies.”
Despite acknowledging that Shell has “an obligation toward citizens to reduce CO2 emissions,” the appeals court on Tuesday scrapped a legal mandate compelling the company to slash its emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with 2019 levels, saying it was “unable to establish that the social standard of care entails an obligation for Shell to reduce its CO2 emissions by 45%, or some other percentage.”
“It is primarily up to the government to ensure the protection of human rights,” the court added.
Laurie van der Burg of Oil Change International said in response that “while we mourn today’s setback, the ruling establishes a responsibility for Big Oil and Gas to act that future litigation can build on.”
“The court ruled protection against climate change is a human right, and corporations have a responsibility to reduce their emissions,” she added. “As far as we know, this is the first case where a court has acknowledged that new investments in oil and gas are incompatible with international climate goals.”
Shell, which is responsible for just over 2% of global CO2 emissions, said in a statement that it was “pleased” with the court’s ruling and claimed to be “making good progress in our strategy to deliver more value with less emissions.”
But research by the human rights organization Global Witness has found that Shell has consistently overstated the scale of its investments in green energy — including by characterizing fossil fuels as “renewable.”
“Even as Shell claims to be reducing its oil production, it is planning to grow its gas business by more than 20% over the next few years, leading to significant additional emissions,” Global Witness wrote in a complaint to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last year.
Andy Palmen, the director of Greenpeace Netherlands, said Tuesday that while campaigners working toward a just phaseout of fossil fuel emissions are “disappointed that Shell is being allowed to continue polluting,” they “will not give up the fight.”
“This only motivates us more to take action against major polluters,” said Palmen. “It really gives hope that the court finds that Shell must respect human rights and has a duty to reduce its CO2 emissions.”
“Today’s ruling underscores the importance of world leaders now negotiating at the U.N. Climate Summit in Baku taking responsibility,” Palmen added, referring to the COP29 gathering that kicked off on Monday in Azerbaijan’s capital city. “The summit in Dubai last year marked the end of coal, oil, and gas, now governments must come up with concrete plans to move away from fossil fuels.”
The Dutch appeals court’s ruling came in the wake of new research showing that oil and gas production surged to an all-time high in 2023 — the hottest year on record.
“The oil and gas industry is not transitioning,” the environmental group Urgewald and dozens of other NGOs found. “In fact, 95% of the upstream companies on [the Global Oil and Gas Exit List] are still exploring or developing new oil and gas resources. This includes the oil and gas producers TotalEnergies, Shell, BP, Eni, Equinor, OXY, OMV, and Ecopetrol, which all claim to be targeting net zero emissions by 2050.”
Nils Bartsch, head of oil and gas research at Urgewald, said Tuesday that the 2023 oil and gas production record is “deeply concerning.”
“If we do not end fossil fuel expansion and move towards a managed decline of oil and gas production,” said Bartsch, “the 1.5°C goal will be out of reach.”
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