Mr. Jonathan White:

I am appearing today for ClientEarth, which is an international environmental law NGO. One issue ClientEarth focuses on is greenwashing, which is seen as a key barrier to a wide range of environmental goals and to the attainment of a high degree of human health. ClientEarth’s greenwashing work involves several things, such as engaging with regulators and policymakers and supporting enforcement through claims and complaints.

The context of this work is that, in 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, concluded that limiting warming to 1.5°C would require a rapid escalation in the scale and pace of transition, particularly in the next ten to 20 years. The use of fossil fuels is the dominant cause of climate change and therefore achieving the Paris goal requires the drastic reduction of fossil fuel use. However, in contrast to this, fossil fuel advertising preserves demand for the same products that must be rapidly reduced to meet that Paris goal. It also often misleads consumers about the environmental attributes of harmful products and harmful industries.

ClientEarth therefore supports the European campaign for a ban on advertising and sponsorship by fossil fuel and fossil fuel transport companies. This position draws on two things: first, the international scientific consensus on decarbonisation from the IPCC and others and, second, ClientEarth’s experience of seeking to enforce the prohibition on misleading advertising. I will expand on these two things for the remainder of my statement.

To begin with the science, according to the IPCC, decarbonisation requires public behaviour change in the consumption of fossil fuel products. This is known as "demand-side mitigation" in the literature. The change implicates businesses as social actors because they influence public behaviours and social norms through advertising. However, the IPCC highlights that fossil fuel industries’ advertising has acted as a barrier to decarbonisation by shaping narratives such as climate scepticism and derailing climate mitigation. Accordingly, the IPCC’s examples of decarbonisation policy measures include the regulation of advertising. The IPCC also refers to the risks of what is called "carbon lock-in", which is the build-up of economic, institutional or social inertia around carbon-intensive technologies that become difficult or costly to phase out once installed. This means, conversely, that low-carbon alternatives are locked out. Fossil fuel advertising plays a crucial role in perpetuating carbon lock-in in the forms of inertia I mentioned.

According to climate scientists, we have instead to cross what are called "social tipping points" to make transition effective. Those are contagious and fast-spreading processes of social and technological change and they need to be tipped within the next few years. Bans on advertising for fossil fuel products are again noted in the literature as a policy intervention that will trigger social tipping points and create an enabling environment.

There is evidence of democratic support for bans. The UK and French citizens’ climate assemblies backed such bans or restrictions on high emissions products and sectors. As Ms Costello mentioned, national and local governments in France, the Netherlands, Canada, the UK, Australia, Sweden and elsewhere are acting or seeking to restrict fossil fuel advertisements in various ways. Similar to tobacco advertising bans, the fossil fuel advertising ban is supported by the World Health Organization in light of the wide-ranging health impacts of climate change and clean air pollution.

Meanwhile, studies show that potentially misleading fossil fuel climate advertising is proliferating, often relying on common and co-ordinated sector narratives that contradict decarbonisation science. ClientEarth’s support for the ban is therefore based also on its experience of seeking to enforce prohibitions on misleading advertising. According to European Commission guidance on the unfair commercial practices directive, which is the consumer law at the European level, environmental claims in advertising must be substantiated by robust and well-accepted scientific evidence. This law should operate to prevent misleading fossil fuel environmental claims. However, in practice we find that structural barriers contribute to a significant enforcement gap, so the law is not sufficiently observed in practice and the market is flooded with practices that would appear to be illegal. Regulators, consumer associations and PR and legal professionals do not have sufficient capacities or sufficient expertise in what are often complex issues of climate science to be unpicked. In addition, claims and complaints tend to be costly, complex and lengthy, typically taking at least one to two years to resolve, by which time a new marketing strategy is usually in place.

Nevertheless, we have seen a wave of litigation, regulatory guidance and self-regulatory bodies’ rulings. These are important in raising awareness and signalling the risks, but they do not appear to have solved the problem. Fossil fuel companies appear to be incentivised to promote the core narratives that underpin their social licence to operate in their current business models, irrespective of the mounting legal risk. Therefore, we believe fossil fuel greenwashing is liable to grow unless it is prevented at source. ClientEarth’s position is that a fossil fuel advertising ban is necessary for ensuring legal compliance and as a necessary policy measure to achieve the net zero transition.