The lawyers of the Ontier firm dropped a bomb in the commercial courts of Santander on February 21.
It was an unprecedented complaint.
For the actors, two giants of the Ibex: Iberdrola, the plaintiff, and Repsol, the defendant.
Due to the accusations: the electricity company blames the oil company for unfair competition for
greenwashing
(ecopostureo) in its advertising campaigns and in the information offered on its website.
And, also, because of the starkness: there are 107 pages in which the electricity company eviscerates the oil company, which it reproaches for presenting itself as a “leader in the energy transition and that protects the environment” when “99.4% of “its income” comes “from the production and marketing of non-renewable energy.”
Repsol responds by attributing the lawsuit – which it sees as “lacking foundation” – to Iberdrola's “nervousness”: “it is not used to operating in a competitive framework.”
The depth of the movement, and the fact that it was directly in the courts and not in advertising regulatory bodies such as Autocontrol, has shaken the foundations of the entire sector.
And it has given wings to environmental movements, which have been rowing in the same direction for years with infinitely lesser means.
“We support the demand,” says Carlos Rico, member of Transport and Environment, an organization that brings together dozens of European environmental NGOs in pursuit of clean mobility.
"But it is not support for Iberdrola, but for
Repsol's fight against
greenwashing ."
“This demand confirms that green has a market value, and that it is advisable to be demanding and avoid confusion or misleading advertising,” says, for her part, the third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, who on Tuesday, One day after the lawsuit was revealed, he woke up with a tweet in which he took part in this fight.
“One striking thing about this case is that it was not consumer associations that raised this demand, but rather another company alleging reasons of market distortion,” Ribera told EL PAÍS.
Miguel Crespo, lawyer for the Federation of Consumers and Users CECU, responds: “We are afraid of facing such dangerous enemies and that, for example, they will impose costs on us.
But we share the substance of the lawsuit and we are looking forward to seeing how it is resolved.”
Neither Crespo nor any of the experts consulted for this report remember a similar complaint in Spain for
greenwashing
, an increasingly widespread and questioned practice that consists of a company or product presenting itself as green or committed to the environment and the fight climate without being true.
“I am not aware of a lawsuit like this,” confirms Ana Barreira, director of the International Institute of Law and Environment (IIDMA), who recalls that “the avenues that, until now, the Spanish legal system offers are very limited.”
However, the feeling of the specialists consulted also underlies a feeling: that the paradigm is about to change and that the siege against ecopostureo will become increasingly greater.
Not only against fossil energy companies.
“When the new European legislation is approved, demands may increase.
Things will be clearer and those interested will have a clear legal framework on which to base themselves, which does not exist now,” says Antonio Vercher, the coordinating court prosecutor for the Environment and Urban Planning of Spain.
The Government is already working on the transposition, through the future sustainable consumption law, of the directive with which the EU seeks to improve product labeling and which will prohibit the use of so-called misleading environmental “claims”.
Many actors are pending the final approval of this text: environmental organizations, companies and supervisors, such as Autocontrol.
“We are monitoring all the regulatory changes that are coming in this sector, with the processing and transposition of several directives,” says a spokesperson for this advertising self-regulation body, who assures that they have already addressed some cases regarding environmental claims. , although the conflict is still “not very high” in this area.
Finally, the European directive will establish the legal bases to define the criteria that must be met by companies that want to make green claims about their activity.
“Then, these will be externally verified according to the authorities decided by each State.
What we ask from Parliament is that there be sanctions for companies that fail to comply with these criteria,” says socialist MEP Laura Ballarín, who has been following the processing of this rule.
But the European Council - the body in which the governments of the Twenty-seven are represented - still needs to give the final approval, something that the current presidency, in the hands of Belgium, expects for this semester.
“We are waiting for the incorporation of the directive that will improve the capacity for action of civil society, although now there was scope for action,” says Jaime Doreste, lawyer and member of the legal team of Ecologistas en Acción.
His organization, he recalls, already sued the French automobile company Peugeot for a campaign in 2008 in which they claimed that their vehicles were increasingly polluting less.
It was not true, and in 2013 the Provincial Court of Madrid agreed with the environmentalists.
Social sensitivity has changed a lot since then, but the regulations remain practically the same.
“The door to
greenwashing
is now open,” admits economist Helena Viñes, advisor to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV).
She is, among other things, one of the 17 experts that the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, turned to to create a guide against ecoposturing, which was presented at the climate summit held in 2022 in Sharm on Sheikh (Egypt).
That document made it clear that a company cannot be considered green if it continues to rely on fossil fuels and that offsetting its emissions—for example, through forests—must be a last resort and a minority.
Viñes believes that the path still open to ecopostureo will be closed thanks to all the regulations that the EU is approving also referring to investments and the governance of companies: “four or five years from now, greenwashing
will be very difficult
.”
In his opinion, this is already being noticed, also in part due to the international political context, in the lowering of the bombastic climate objectives that many companies had set and that had no real basis in their business plans.
Banks, airlines... and bottles of water
One of the clearest examples is that of many oil and gas companies, which announce supposed plans to cut greenhouse emissions but in practice continue to expand the extraction and marketing of hydrocarbons.
The latest report on climate litigation prepared by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the Sabin Center at Columbia University (New York) reviews claims for greenwashing before regulatory bodies, such as a campaign that overthrew the Italian competition authority of a diesel fuel promoted by the oil company Eni.
One of the most active regulatory bodies in this type of case has been the Advertising Standards Authority of the United Kingdom, which has recently vetoed several campaigns for supposedly green fuels from Shell, Petronas and Repsol itself.
But the fight against ecopostureo is not limited only to fossil fuel companies.
In fact, this week a ruling was made against the Dutch airline KLM, which an Amsterdam court has condemned for deceiving its customers with vague environmental claims that painted “an overly optimistic picture” about supposedly sustainable fuels.
The case had been reported by an NGO.
And, just a month ago, the German textile company Zalando promised to remove several mentions of sustainability from its website after the EU called them “misleading.”
In Denmark, several non-governmental organizations have also sued the Danish Crown agricultural cooperative, the largest pork producer in the Twenty-seven.
As noted in the UNEP report, NGOs allege that it was misleading consumers by claiming that its meat production has benefits for the fight against climate change.
This case remains open.
Banks have also been in the center of the target.
This Friday, for example, Greenpeace protested at the headquarters of Banco Santander over the financing of meat projects in Brazil that contribute to deforestation.
“There is a gap between what its climate and biodiversity policies say and what the bank does in Brazil,” denounces this environmental organization.
Similarly, another report from Stand.earth blames this same bank and the also Spanish BBVA for financing oil and gas extraction in the Peruvian Amazon.
Outside the EU, in Australia, HSBC bank has received complaints to the advertising regulator for continuing to invest in fossil fuels despite advertising a campaign to protect the Great Barrier Reef.
And in Europe, several claims have been filed against bottled water companies for presenting their packaging as 100% recycled.
“With scrutiny from regulators and consumers becoming more aware of the rise of
greenwashing
, companies will face greater pressure.
Both for demonstrating their environmental commitment, and for being more transparent,” warns Carlos Gomes, professor at the University of Cape Town and also a member of the group of 17 UN experts on ecopostureo.
“Those that do not risk reputational damage, so it is absolutely essential that companies in these sectors prioritize the authenticity and integrity of their sustainability efforts and initiatives.”
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