Description
Fossil fuels are rarely CO2-neutral. Advertising for them is misleading, according to the Hamburg Regional Court, Germany. A lawsuit brought by the environmental organization Deutsche Umwelthilfe against Shell was upheld.
The Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) describes its ruling on an advertising campaign by Shell Germany, which it won before the Hamburg Regional Court, as a "bombshell for climate protection". On August 9 2024, the court declared it misleading to claim that fossil fuels and motor oil were CO2-neutral (case number: 315 O 108/22).
CO2-neutral driving
The DUH had already initiated legal action against the oil company in May 2022. The association was upset that Shell was advertising CO2-neutral driving based on its fossil fuels. With a surcharge of 1.1 cents per liter, greenhouse gas emissions could be neutralized because Shell used the money to support compensation measures. Shell ignored the request to stop this advertising at the time. The DUH then initiated proceedings before the Regional Court.
Not transparent and highly misleading
The DUH questioned the Shell advertising with several arguments. Firstly, it was not transparent how Shell achieved CO2 neutrality. On the other hand, the purchase of emission credits from forest protection projects in Peru and Indonesia is unsuitable for compensating for CO2 emissions. Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries, while forest projects sometimes have a very short lifespan.
From the DUH's point of view, CO2-neutral driving and motor oil advertised as CO2-neutral are therefore "highly misleading to consumers". Federal Managing Director Jürgen Resch announced that he would continue to take action against companies that advertise fossil products or services as climate-neutral with unsuitable compensation promises. He called on industry and trade to "honestly reduce the environmental and climate impacts of their products, publish the actual values so that a comparison is possible, and refrain from any form of greenwashing."
CO2-compensation
After the successful climate litigation by DUH, Shell Germany changed their website text from CO2-neutral to CO2-compensation. After a cease-and-desist letter in 2025, the website page was finally taken down by Shell.
Shell uses same tricks around the world
Already in 2021, a similar Shell ad promoting 'CO-neutral' driving was ruled misleading in The Netherlands. Shell switched to 'CO-compensation', without changing any of the underlying principles of the deemed invalid compensation scheme. This complaint was again upheld in 2022. Greenpeace Canada also filed a complaint against Shell's 'drive carbon neutral' ads in 2021, and found 2 years later that the ads had quietly been removed. It was already clear then that Shell continued promoting the program in other countries, including Germany as we see now.
