French Minister for Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher on Friday called on the TotalEnergies group to go “faster” on the development of renewable energies, while environmental activists are trying to prevent the holding of the general meeting of its shareholders in Paris. “Total is investing in renewable energies, but the challenge is to go faster, stronger and above all faster,” said the minister, guest of Franceinfo radio, calling on the energy company to “put the package on renewables.
Oil and gas companies “must reinvent themselves, they must get out of fossil fuels,” said the minister, referring in particular to the IPCC reports: “they will have no future, no future – and I told Patrick Pouyanné for Total-, if they are not able to trace these trajectories of exit from fossil fuels and decarbonization”.
While scuffles took place between police and demonstrators for the climate, near the Paris room where the general assembly of the French group is to be held, the minister was critical of the “unannounced” demonstrations, which “create from disorder to public order”. However, she distinguished, on the merits, “the question raised by these actions and which is a very good question”.
“From the moment the demonstration is not announced, we are in a disorganized expression, even though activists have posed the debate within the general assembly”, recalled Ms. Pannier-Runacher, referring to the advisory resolution from the activist shareholder organization Follow This, which mainly tackles indirect CO2 emissions.
“You have a vote that will take place on Total’s climate policy and it is in this context that the debate can take place and that we can indeed put pressure on Total”, added the minister. Asked about stopping TotalEnergies’ investments in oil, she felt that “these are trajectories that are built over time”, recalling that France had stopped the exploitation of hydrocarbons on its soil.
On the subject of the controversial Eacop heated pipeline project developed by TotalEnergies in Uganda, the Minister called for “avoiding giving lessons”, particularly in relation to the country, stressing that the African countries she meets, particularly in the conferences for the climate, express the “need for means of development” and send European countries back to their record in terms of emissions, which is “worse” than theirs.
