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This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Paris agreement. It is also a decade since another key moment in climate justice, when a state was ordered for the first time to cut its carbon emissions faster to protect its citizens from climate change. The Urgenda case, which was upheld by the Netherlands’ supreme court in 2019, was one of the first rumblings of a wave of climate litigation around the world that campaigners say has resulted in a new legal architecture for climate protection.
Over the past 12 months, there have been many more important rulings and tangible changes on climate driven by legal action.
Rosebank and Jackdaw approval ruled illegal
The year started with a bang when UK government approval of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields in the North Sea was ruled illegal by the Scottish court of session, because it did not account for greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning the extracted fossil fuels.
The judgment relied heavily on a 2024 supreme court ruling in a climate case brought by campaigner Sarah Finch. That ruling also led the high court to throw out planning permission for a new coalmine in Whitehaven, Cumbria, after which the company withdrew its plans.
The government published new guidance in June on how these assessments should be undertaken, although the ruling does not automatically prevent regulators from approving fossil fuel projects once they have fully analysed their impacts.
Equinor published a revised environmental assessment of Rosebank in October and a decision on approval is imminent. The government has hinted that it may give consent again, and Greenpeace has vowed further legal action if that happens.
Plans to build Brazil’s largest coal plant scrapped
Civil society organisations have been campaigning for years against a coalmine and power plant in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul planned by the coal company Copelmi. If it had gone ahead, it would have been the largest coal plant in Brazil.
The groups argued that the Nova Seival plant and Guaíba mine breached Brazil’s climate obligations, and that the licensing process had not been undertaken properly. In 2022, a court suspended the licences and set out requirements for how the process should be revised. But in February this year, Copelmi formally withdrew its plans, saying the project had become unfeasible.
German court opens door for climate damages claims
On the face of it, it sounds like a failure that a German court rejected a climate case brought by a Peruvian farmer and mountain guide against German energy company RWE.
Saúl Luciano Lliuya had sought 0.47% of the overall cost of building flood defences to protect his home from a melting glacier, a proportion equivalent to RWE’s contribution to global emissions.
But the decade-old case had always been a stretch, and in reality it set a potentially important precedent on polluters’ liability for their carbon emissions.
So it was not a surprise when later in the year a group of Pakistani farmers whose livelihoods were devastated by floods three years ago fired the starting shot in a new legal claim against two of Germany’s most polluting companies.
EnergyAustralia settles greenwashing lawsuit with parents
In May, EnergyAustralia settled a greenwashing lawsuit brought by a group of Australian parents.
Climate action group Parents for Climate claimed EnergyAustralia breached Australian Consumer Law when promoting electricity and gas products because the carbon offsets used to secure certification were not backed by meaningful reductions in emissions.
As part of the settlement, the utility company acknowledged that carbon offsets do not prevent or undo damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions and apologised to 400,000 customers who were part of the scheme.
It was the first case in the country to be brought against a company for marketing itself as carbon neutral.
International courts issue landmark climate opinions
Two international courts issued landmark advisory opinions on climate change in July.
First was the inter-American court of human rights, which found that there is a human right to a healthy climate and states have a duty to protect it. This was closely followed by the international court of justice, which said countries must prevent harm to the climate system and that failing to do so could result in their having to pay compensation and make other forms of restitution.
The two documents are already being referenced in climate lawsuits around the world. And attempts were made to use them as leverage during climate talks in Brazil last month, although this proved more difficult than anticipated.
New South Wales coalmine expansion annulled
Approval for the largest coalmine expansion in New South Wales was annulled in July because the state’s independent planning commission did not take into account the project’s full greenhouse gas emissions.
Denman Aberdeen Muswellbrook Scone Healthy Environment Group, working with the Environmental Defenders Office, filed the case in 2023, arguing MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant Optimisation coal mining project near Muswellbrook would worsen climate change and threaten a unique species of legless lizard.
The court of appeal said the commission failed to account for “scope 3” emissions when the coal is exported and burned overseas.
Apple scales back carbon neutrality claims
In August, a Frankfurt court ruled that Apple was not allowed to call its Apple Watch “carbon neutral”.
It agreed with German NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe that the company could not demonstrate long-term carbon neutrality because the claim was based on funding eucalyptus groves in Paraguay, leases for which expire soon.
Apple is trying to get a similar greenwashing case against it in the US dismissed.
A few months later, tech news websites noticed that Apple had stopped marketing its newly launched watches as carbon neutral in other countries too.
Hawaii to cut transport emissions after lawsuit
Last year, Hawaii agreed to settle a lawsuit by 13 young people, represented by Our Children’s Trust, who said it was breaching their rights with infrastructure that contributes to climate change.
The settlement acknowledged the constitutional rights of Hawaii youth to a life-sustaining climate, and the state promised to develop a roadmap to achieve zero emissions for its ground, sea and inner island air transportation systems by 2045.
In October, it delivered. The energy security and waste reduction plan includes new electric vehicle chargers, investments in public and active transport, and efforts to sequester carbon through native reforestation. It will be updated annually.
Campaigners called the plan a “critical milestone”.
Campaigners put end to coal power plant in Kenya
Environmental campaigners won a key climate case challenging approval of a coal power plant in Lamu, on Kenya’s southern coast, in October.
Litigation against Amu Power (a joint venture between Centum and Gulf Energy) and the Kenyan National Environment Management Authority began a decade ago and construction was ordered to stop in 2019.
The environment and land court finally upheld a revocation of the plant’s licence because of flaws in the environmental assessment, particularly a lack of proper public participation. Climate change impacts had also not been properly assessed.
TotalEnergies ordered to stop greenwashing in France
Later in the month, TotalEnergies was found to have made false claims about its climate goals in a French court for false claims about its climate goals.
Les Amis de la Terre France, Greenpeace France and Notre Affaire à Tous, with the support of ClientEarth, claimed TotalEnergies’s “reinvention” marketing campaign broke European consumer law by suggesting it could reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 while continuing to produce fossil fuels.
The Paris judicial court ruled that some claims on the company’s French website were likely to mislead consumers because there was not enough information about what they meant.
Meat companies settle greenwashing claims
In early November, New York agreed a $1.1m settlement with Brazilian meat company JBS’s US arm to end a lawsuit claiming the company misled customers about its efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
The money will be used to support climate-smart agriculture programmes that help New York farmers adopt best practices to reduce emissions, increase resiliency and enhance productivity. JBS USA also agreed to reform its environmental marketing practices and report annually to the New York office of the attorney general for three years.
Soon after, Tyson Foods also agreed to stop saying it will reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and marketing beef as climate friendly to settle a greenwashing lawsuit brought by agriculture industry watchdog Environmental Working Group.
UK government publishes tougher climate plan
The UK government published a revised carbon budget and growth delivery plan in October after its previous plan was ruled unlawful by the high court.
The new document reaffirms the UK’s commitment to decarbonise its electricity supply by 2030 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically by 2037, with specific measures for energy, transport, agriculture, homes and industry.
It follows a successful lawsuit by the Good Law Project, Friends of the Earth and ClientEarth. After the striking down of the original net zero strategy in court in 2022, the trio argued that the “threadbare” revised version was still not good enough.
However, campaigners are planning another round of legal action challenging national climate strategy, this time at the European court of human rights.
Three Norwegian oilfields ruled illegal
Licences for three oilfields in the North Sea were declared illegal in November by a Norwegian court because they were approved without the full impacts of climate change being considered.
The Borgarting court of appeal upheld a claim by Greenpeace Nordic and Natur og Ungdom challenging permission for the Equinor-operated Breidablikk and Aker BP’s Yggdrasil and Tyrving fields.
The decision closely followed the European court of human rights’s dismissal of a lawsuit by the same claimants against Norway, which nonetheless set important standards for how states should undertake environmental impact assessments of fossil fuel projects.
However, the Borgarting court stopped short of ordering the fields to stop producing oil, giving the Norwegian government six months to sort out the licences.
