While the sporting clash between France and South Africa is expected this evening, it is another aspect of the World Cup that environmental activists wanted to highlight this Sunday. Around ten activists from the Ile-de-France branch of the “Extinction Rebellion” (XR) movement met early in the morning in Marcoussis (25 km southwest of Paris) in front of the FFR gates. After pouring the contents of oil cans, they placed rugby balls there, according to photos and videos posted online by the group. “Totally guilty, deceptive polluter, you are going to have a bad time,” they notably shouted.
XR thus wanted to “denounce the financial support of TotalEnergies, one of the main sponsors of the Rugby World Cup, which is trying to improve its image by exhibiting it in the stadiums,” he explained.
The company said it “fully respects the right to demonstrate and freedom of expression”, but “deplores any form of violence, whether verbal, physical or material”, in a reaction sent to the AFP.
“It is false to claim that TotalEnergies is greenwashing by sponsoring the France 2023 Rugby World Cup. TotalEnergies has a long tradition of partnership with rugby,” notably for 35 years with the Section Paloise in Pau, she added. .
The Mondial “is in particular an opportunity for the company to raise awareness of the multi-energy dimension of our activities and our ambition to be a major player in the energy transition, committed to carbon neutrality in 2050,” he said. she pleaded.
The company also recalled that it would invest this year “nearly 5 billion euros in renewable and low-carbon energies”, or “for the first time, more investments in low-carbon energies than in new projects of hydrocarbons”.
Despite calls to reduce fossil fuels, TotalEnergies announced at the end of September that it intended to “increase its hydrocarbon production by 2 to 3% per year over the next five years”, while ensuring that it wanted to maintain “the course of its strategy balanced multi-energy” with its strong growth in renewable electricity.