Total Energies advert banned for greenwash - but Shell let off the hook
Above: a social media advert by Total Energies from September 2024 wad deemed misleading
Badvertising and Adfree Cities are concerned that the UK advertising watchdog’s contradictory rulings on two adverts from fossil companies, TotalEnergies and Shell, demonstrate a failure to properly regulate greenwash ads.
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On 9th April 2025, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned a social media ad for French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies for misleading over the firm’s environmental impact. The ads focused on renewable wind energy projects whilst failing to mention that TotalEnergie’s operations remain mostly based in fossil fuels.
In a separate ruling, a TV ad for Shell was not banned, despite 76 complaints. In the ad, an engineer walks through scenes of electric vehicle (EV) charging points, an offshore gas rig and a family kitchen, and a laboratory labelled “Energy Transition Skills Hub” with miniature windfarms. In the closing scene, superimposed text details the proportion of Shell’s investments in fossil fuels and lower carbon technologies.
““With this ruling the ASA is essentially endorsing greenwash, marking a systemic and ongoing failure to protect consumers from fossil fuel misinformation.””
Adfree Cities made complaints against both ads. In particular, we are concerned that if this is the ceiling of fossil fuel ad regulation, then it sets a dangerous precedent for carbon intensive advertising going forwards.
Veronica Wignall, Codirector at Adfree Cities said: “Any advert that portrays Shell as prioritising the environment in any way is categorically misleading while the oil major continues to expand its fossil fuel operations, directly undermining a clean energy transition.”
“With this ruling the ASA is essentially endorsing greenwash, marking a systemic and ongoing failure to protect consumers from fossil fuel misinformation.”
Freddie Daley, senior campaigner at Badvertising, which campaigns for a national tobacco-style ban on fossil fuel advertising, said: “These paradoxical rulings are the latest chapter in an anthology of failures that shows the ASA is not fit for purpose. As a regulator, their processes of investigation remain opaque, ad hoc and inconsistent. The result is that the British public are let down time after time and exposed to vast amounts of greenwashing and misleading adverts. The ASA is clearly failing to rise to meet the scale of the challenge.”
“In the meantime, local and national governments should explore introducing tobacco-style ad bans, cutting exposure to polluting advertising, and cutting out the need for a reactive and unreliable regulator.”
Shell’s 2024 “Powering Progress” TV ads include the phrases: “On a mission to install thousands of Shell EV chargers by 2035”, “Investing in people and communities” and “Shell is helping power the UK now and into the future”.
Shell has been criticised for abandoning and weakening its climate pledges, its massive investment in fossil fuel expansion, and its lack of adequate climate policy. Meanwhile, the oil major has invested heavily in marketing, including to connect with younger audiences.
In our complaint, we noted that despite the ad’s focus on green activities, Shell’s own reporting shows that its investments in genuinely renewable activities was just 13.3% in 2023, according to the internationally standardised Sustainable Finance Taxonomy. (See p. 336 in Shell’s Annual Report.)
The ad includes superimposed text in its closing sequence, which the ASA said “gave further context to the message of the ad”. The text read: “In 2023, 68% of Shell’s global investments included oil & gas, 23% included low-carbon energy solutions and 9% non-energy products. Shell’s target is to become a net zero emissions (NZE) energy business by 2050.”
Adfree Cities also raised the concern that this information would not be read by the majority of viewers, and that it was incorrect, using a more favourable figure of 23% of investments into renewable energy.
The inclusion of this text follows a 2023 ASA ruling in which a series of Shell’s “Powering Progress” ads were banned for focusing on renewable energy whilst failing to mention Shell’s overwhelming investment in fossil fuels.
James Ward, campaigner at Adfree Cities said: “Ad regulation is supposed to protect us from harmful greenwash, but this decision from the ASA highlights gaping holes in the current rulebook.”
“Fine print explanations won’t protect us in the greenwash arms race. As greenwash becomes ever more sophisticated, we need regulation – and legislation – to match.”
Several councils across the UK, including Edinburgh and Sheffield, have banned fossil fuel advertising, citing climate and health goals. They join the Faculty of Public Health, the Climate Change Committee, the UK House of Lords and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in marking high carbon advertising as a significant factor in exacerbating climate breakdown.
Adfree Cities are lobbying for a national, tobacco-style ban on advertising that greenwashes polluters and worsens the climate emergency. Could you write to your MP to ask them to ban polluting ads?
NOTES
AD DETAILS
TotalEnergies – 2024
TotalEnergies ad images here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rKqqdbxmanwZ6l5pOGrnUcK3tOACwmK9?usp=sharing
The TotalEnergies advert, seen on social media platform X in May 2024, received one complaint from Adfree Cities. It focused on TotalEnergies’ work with clean energy start-up NASH Renewables, which develops wind farm technology with support from a TotalEnergies accelerator. A final static slide featured the words “The Roads To Carbon Neutral”.
A caption read: “Uncover how TotalEnergies’ electricity start-up accelerator program has supported start-ups like Nash Renewables”. Adfree Cities’ complaint held that this ad was misleading as it failed to include information regarding TotalEnergies’ investments in fossil fuels, which remain substantial.
The ASA’s ruling notes that in 2023, 90% of TotalEnergies’ sales arose from petroleum and gas products. A 2030 target aims for 30% of the company’s sales to comprise oil, 50% gas, and 20% low-carbon molecules electricity. In the same year, TotalEnergies were responsible for 1.5% of global oil production, and had allocated 68.3% of their capital expenditure towards fossil fuel energies and 31.7% to lower-carbon activities.
In its ruling on Wednesday 9 April 2025, the ASA concluded: “The ad focused on lower-carbon energy products. Although TotalEnergies were taking steps to diversify their energy production, as consumers and business audiences were likely to view the ad as reflective of their current activity, information about the proportion of TotalEnergies’ overall business model that comprised lower-carbon energy products was material information that should have been included. In the absence of that information, we concluded the ad was likely to mislead.”
Shell advert at London Waterloo train station, 2024