When Climate Policy Finally Costs Big Oil, the Courtroom Battles Begin 

Europe’s fossil fuel giants backed carbon capture, until Brussels asked them to help finance it.

Europe’s oil and gas companies spent years telling policymakers that carbon capture and storage (CCS) was essential for decarbonisation. Now that the European Union is finally asking them to help pay for it, they are heading to court. 

At a press briefing hosted by Bellona Europa this week, campaigners and legal experts laid out what is quickly becoming one of the most consequential climate policy battles in Europe. At stake is Article 23 of the EU’s Net-Zero Industry Act, a measure requiring oil and gas producers operating in Europe to contribute to the deployment of CO₂ storage infrastructure by 2030.  

The logic behind the policy is simple. Heavy industries – also known as “hard-to-abate” sectors – such as cement, lime and chemicals cannot fully decarbonise through electrification alone. Some emissions will need to be captured and permanently stored underground. But Europe lacks the infrastructure to do this at scale. Without storage sites, companies will not invest in carbon capture and without guaranteed demand, storage developers will not invest either, which leads to paralysis. 

Article 23 was designed to break that deadlock. Under the legislation, oil and gas producers are expected to help make 50 million tonnes of annual CO₂ injection capacity available to the market by 2030. The EU considers this an initial step toward a much larger storage network needed for climate neutrality by 2050.  

But fifteen legal cases have now been filed against the European Commission by companies and subsidiaries linked to some of the largest fossil fuel firms operating in Europe, including Shell, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies.  

The companies argue that the obligations are disproportionate, procedurally flawed, and economically unfair. Several litigants also claim the regulation effectively makes oil and gas producers responsible for solving a decarbonisation challenge created by emissions across the wider economy. 

Yet one detail kept resurfacing throughout the briefing: many of these same actors previously supported the policy framework publicly. The briefing notes that industry associations representing several litigating companies had once described the storage target as “crucial” for Europe’s climate goals.  

In other words, CCS was acceptable when it promised subsidies, public relations value, and future business opportunities. It became controversial the moment binding obligations and capital expenditure entered the conversation. 

This contradiction reveals something deeper about Europe’s climate politics. For years, the EU’s decarbonisation agenda largely revolved around targets, market signals, and voluntary corporate commitments. But the transition is now entering a more difficult phase: implementation.  

Building pipelines, grids, renewable energy systems, and CO₂ storage infrastructure requires enormous investment and inevitably raises the question of who pays. Increasingly, however, parts of the fossil fuel sector are refusing to foot the bill. 

During the briefing, Bellona Europa’s CCS Policy Advisor, William Druet, warned that prolonged litigation could delay implementation by years, potentially putting the EU’s 2030 climate objectives out of reach. That concern is now concrete. The legal brief itself explicitly states that successful challenges against Article 23 could force the Commission to recalculate obligations and restart parts of the process, creating years of delay across the CCS value chain.  

During a follow-up exchange after the briefing, William Druet argued that no existing EU instrument currently offers a real substitute for Article 23. While mechanisms such as the EU ETS, Innovation Fund, and national subsidy schemes can support individual projects, he warned that they are insufficient to deliver CO₂ storage infrastructure at the necessary scale and speed. 

“Without that obligation, we risk going back to a system based mainly on voluntary industry action, project-by-project subsidies, and the carbon price,” Druet said, “putting the EU’s climate goals effectively out of reach.” 

His point goes to the heart of the dispute. Article 23 was introduced precisely because market incentives alone had failed to create a functioning CCS value chain in Europe. 

Here lies the striking irony. Oil and gas companies often frame themselves as indispensable partners in the green transition because they possess the geological expertise and infrastructure required for carbon storage. The briefing makes precisely the same point in defence of Article 23. But if these companies truly want to position themselves as climate actors rather than sunset industries, then participating in the build-out of decarbonisation infrastructure cannot remain optional. 

It could be argued that this debate ultimately concerns power and responsibility. For decades, fossil fuel companies generated enormous profits while externalising the environmental and social costs of extraction. Now, when Europe attempts to socialise part of the transition effort back onto the industry itself, the response is legal resistance. 

Delay is not the only political risk; the real stakes are political credibility. If the EU cannot enforce one of its first serious market-building climate measures against some of the wealthiest corporations operating in Europe, then the broader promise of a managed green industrial transition begins to look fragile. 

At some point, the transition must confront entrenched economic interests, and for Europe, that moment of truth is here.