Badvert of the Month: Total Energies & the Rugby World Cup
Advert for Total’s sponsoring of Rugby World Cup 2023
This month will see the biggest stars and best teams in international rugby gather in France for the Rugby World Cup. But before a single scrum has started, the organisers are already fending off fierce criticism of the decisions to partner with fossil fuel giant, Total Energies, as a main tournament sponsor.
The decision to partner with Total Energies at a time when ocean and land heat records are broken around the world, and wildfire season continues is rage in Europe and North America, is inexcusable. This polluting partnership also makes a mockery of the Rugby World Cup’s sustainability initiatives around the tournament.
Total Energies’ emissions in 2022 were 429 million tonnes of CO2e, which means the company made a bigger contribution to climate change in 2022 than France (408 mt of CO2e), the host nation of the Rugby World Cup that is home to nearly 68 million people.
In 2022, Total Energies ranked third globally for its expansion of oil and gas infrastructure, giving the green light to new fields containing more than 1.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent. By 2025, Total Energies will have approved new projects that could lead to over 1,600 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2 over their lifetimes. Despite their claims, Total Energies do not provide “energies that unite us” - they provide energy that will condemn us to climate chaos.
Some of the nations competing in the tournament are extremely vulnerable to climate change and are already struggling to deal with its impacts. The African nation of Namibia is already grappling with prolonged periods of drought and extreme flooding, whereas the low-lying island nations of Fiji and Togo are existentially threatened by rising seas. Meanwhile, Total Energies are reaping record-breaking rewards for adding to this suffering, doubling their profits in 2022 to $32.6 billion.
The backlash over the partnership has emerged from climate campaigners and professional rugby stars alike. Greenpeace International launched a punchy and visually arresting video that shows how the global fossil fuel industry extracts a rugby stadium full of oil every 3 hours 37 minutes. The video has been viewed nearly 310,000 times on social media.
Former rugby player and captain of the Australian national team, David Pocock, has spoken out publicly about the partnership, stating that fossil fuel companies should not be allowed to sponsor the tournament. Pocock added that fossil fuel firms use sport to "greenwash their image" at a “critical moment in human history” for tackling the climate crisis. Other rugby stars, such as the French player Clément Castets, have spoken out publicly against the deal.
Even some of the cities in France that will be hosting games and travelling fans have sought to distance themselves from this toxic partnership, pledging not to display the Total Energies logo around stadiums and within the fan zones. Already Paris, Lyon and Lille have signed up to limit the visibility of Total’s logo. More are likely to follow.
The campaign, which is expected to continue throughout the entire length of the tournament, is clearly causing a stir at the top of rugby’s governing bodies. World Rugby chief executive Alan Gilpin has acknowledged that "there is a challenging debate around them as a sponsor and as a fossil fuel company", but laid the blame for the polluting deal at the door of the French organisers. More telling, though, is that World Rugby are looking to take these responsibilities in-house, giving World Rugby “the ability to take a different approach to the responsibilities around sustainability". Maybe Total Energies are right, they have united us: in opposition to their climate-wrecking business model and using sport to launder their image.
Total’s partnership with Rugby World Cup 2023
Company background: Total
Total, now TotalEnergies, is a French multinational energy and petroleum company founded in 1924. Its business operations cover the entire oil and gas chain as well as chemical manufacturing. The company was founded after WWI, as an entirely French company. The idea of a partnership with Royal Dutch Shell was rejected by the French president in power, Raymond Poincarré.
In the 1930s, the company was mainly involved with fossil fuel exploration in the Middle East as well as Normandy in France. After WWII, it opened new fields in Venezuela, Canada and Africa, including Algeria (still a French colony and a leading source of oil in the 1950s).
Archival research shows that the company was already aware of the effects of climate change and its contribution to it since the 1970s. However, the company actively contributed to spreading climate denial between the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Over the years, Total was involved in many environmental and corruption scandals. In 2019, a group of environmental NGOs sued the company over its Tilenga Project in Uganda and Tanzania for violating human rights and environmental law. The project involves drilling through a national park, home to a rich biological habitat which would also lead to hundreds of thousands of partial land expropriations. After being delayed for four years for ‘technicalities’, in February 2023, a French court dismissed the fast-track lawsuit brought by campaigners and ruled that it should go to a standard trial for in-depth examination.
Total is an active sponsor and official supplier of many sporting events, especially car championships, including the famous Dakar rally, the World Touring Car Championship, Formula One and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.