In Q1 2025, TotalEnergies earned $4.2 billion in adjusted net income and $7.0 billion in cash flow from operations. Revenue dropped to $47.89 billion from $51.88 billion a year earlier. However, the company held firm because of strong oil and gas output and steady LNG profits, and more interestingly, its carbon credits investment.
The report revealed that production rose 4% year-over-year, averaging 2.55–2.57 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. New output from Brazil, the U.S., Malaysia, Argentina, and Denmark helped drive this growth. Gas prices stayed high, partly balancing weaker oil prices.
Power and LNG Boost TotalEnergies Amid Refining Woes
The LNG business posted $1.3 billion in adjusted net operating income. While LNG trading met expectations, gas trading struggled due to Europe’s volatile markets and geopolitical tensions.
Power operations also grew. The segment generated over $500 million in income and $600 million in cash flow. Key deals, like acquiring Germany’s VSB and investing in battery storage, supported this growth.
Still, downstream operations faced headwinds. Weak refining margins and issues at French and U.S. facilities cut into profits. Petrochemical and biofuel margins in Europe also declined, adding pressure.
Carbon Credit Spending Hits Record High
TotalEnergies spent $2 million on carbon credits in Q1 2025. That’s double what it spent in Q1 2024. This massive spending aims to cut emissions and reach its net-zero target by 2050.
Robust Backing for Nature-Based Projects
A significant segment of its investment supports nature-based solutions like forest protection, regenerative farming, and wetland conservation. By the end of last year, TotalEnergies had collected 13.7 million verified carbon credits. Each year, the company plans to invest $100 million in carbon projects.
- Between 2025 and 2030, TotalEnergies will build a stock of 50 million carbon credits.
- These projects can potentially deliver at least 5 million metric tons of CO₂e credits annually by 2030.
- From 2030, the company will start using high-quality carbon credits to offset its remaining Scope 1 and 2 emissions.
The aim is to build a strong portfolio of trusted projects that support global rules and ensure the credits are real and long-lasting. Additionally, the company expects these projects to bring long-term environmental and social benefits.
- It expects to reach 37 million verified credits by 2030 and 53 million by 2050. These projects could also generate $770 million for local communities.
$100 M Deal with Anew Climate and Aurora Sustainable Lands
TotalEnergies signed a $100 million deal with Anew Climate and Aurora Sustainable Lands last year. The project protects 300,000 hectares of forests across 10 U.S. states—Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
This partnership supports sustainable forest management and boosts the forests’ ability to absorb carbon. It also helps local communities by improving land use and preventing environmental damage. The carbon credits generated help offset the company’s remaining emissions.
What Makes Total Energies the Top Net-Zero Player
Last year, the LNG giant launched the “Our 5 Levers for Sustainable Change” initiative. The goal was to engage all employees in reducing emissions by boosting energy efficiency and adopting low-carbon technologies across its operations.
GHG Emissions Fell in 2024
The company cut emissions from operated sites by more than 36% in 2024 compared to 2015. Notably, over 200 emission-reduction projects helped slash 1.3 million tons of CO₂e.
However, recently the company raised its 2025 emissions goal to 37 Mt CO₂e per year. It aims to cut net Scope 1+2 emissions by 40% by 2030 (vs. 2015 levels). This also includes using 5 million carbon credits from nature-based projects, as explained before. Subsequently, these offsets will be used only for residual emissions from 2030 and consumed gradually at about 10% per year.
By end-2024, TotalEnergies had invested around $750 million in emissions reduction. These investments save 1.5 Mt CO₂e each year and cut energy costs by over $100 million annually.
However, emissions from flexible power generation rose slightly. This happened due to the addition of combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) in the U.S. and U.K., which support TotalEnergies’ low-carbon electricity expansion.
Still, overall emissions dropped 25% from 2015 levels.
- The carbon intensity of upstream oil and gas assets also fell from 21 kg CO₂e/boe in 2015 to 17 kg CO₂e/boe in 2024.
All these figures make TotalEnergies one of the top industry performers.
Scope 3 and Scope 4 Emissions
In 2024, TotalEnergies helped reduce global emissions by 65 million tonnes of CO₂e through LNG sales, as many customers replaced coal with gas for power generation. Although gas increases Scope 3 emissions, it enables cleaner energy and avoids more emissions overall. These are classified as Scope 4 emissions.
The company also avoided 18 million tonnes of CO₂e in 2024 and is aiming for 150 million tonnes of emissions by 2030. This makes 90 Mt from LNG and 60 Mt from renewables while keeping Scope 3 emissions below 400 Mt.
Methane Emissions Drop Drastically
Methane emissions dropped from 64 kt in 2020 to 29 kt in 2024—a 55% cut. TotalEnergies beat its 2025 target early and now aims for a 60% cut by 2025, and an 80% cut by 2030 compared to 2020.
Digital Tools Boost Efficiency
The company is using digital tools to cut emissions smartly. In Exploration & Production, the ForCFR app links carbon forecasts with oil and gas output. In Angola, it helped cut 179 kt CO₂e annually by optimizing well operations.
Another example is: at the Normandy, Donges, and Feyzin refineries, the CarbOptim app tracks energy use in real-time and helps cut steam and energy waste.
2025 Carbon Intensity Reduction Target
TotalEnergies has raised its 2025 carbon intensity reduction target from 15% to 17%, aiming for a 25% emission cut by 2030. That means delivering the same energy with fewer emissions, or more energy with the same carbon footprint. Most of the progress will come from boosting clean electricity, cutting oil use, and growing gas and bioenergy.
Joins Google for Clean Energy
In January 2025, TotalEnergies teamed up with Google Europe to help power its Dutch data centers with 24/7 clean electricity by 2030. They’ll combine Google’s green power deals and add battery storage to handle renewables’ ups and downs. Similar deals are already in place with U.S. tech firms
Switch to Low-Carbon Power by 2025
TotalEnergies aims to power all its refining and chemical sites in Europe and the U.S. with 100% low-carbon electricity by 2025. This target will be achieved through initiatives like the Go Green project in Port Arthur, Texas.
- Additionally, last year it achieved 26 GW of gross installed renewable electricity capacity, targeting 35 GW by 2025 and reaching 100 GW by 2030.
With this progress, TotalEnergies plans to become one of the top five global producers of renewable electricity (wind and solar), excluding Chinese companies.
Latest Projects
In April 2024, TotalEnergies started the Marsa LNG project in Oman. The plant will run on power from a 300 MW solar farm and emit less than 3 kg CO₂ per barrel of oil equivalent.
Also, the company approved the GranMorgu oil project in Suriname.
This all-electric project will use advanced tech to cut emissions below 16 kg CO₂ per barrel of oil equivalent.
Additionally, it aims to:
- Become a key producer of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), targeting 1.5 million tonnes annually by 2030.
- In 2024, the company’s gross biomethane production capacity rose to 1.2 TWh per year
Hydrogen Plans Take Shape
This is part of its long-term plan to decarbonize its operations and energy products.
TotalEnergies is expanding its clean hydrogen portfolio with multiple projects across Europe. In France, it’s building biohydrogen units at La Mède and Grandpuits refineries with Air Liquide, targeting annual CO₂ cuts of 130,000 and 150,000 tonnes respectively.
In the Netherlands, a 250 MW offshore wind-powered electrolyser in Zeeland will supply 30,000 tonnes of green hydrogen from 2029, reducing refinery emissions by 300,000 tonnes yearly.
Furthermore, tolling agreements in Belgium and France will see Air Liquide operate electrolysers in Antwerp (130 MW) and Normandy (100 MW), each producing 15,000 tonnes of hydrogen annually and cutting 150,000 tonnes of CO₂ per site by 2027.
Despite market challenges, TotalEnergies continues to invest in clean energy and climate action. Its rising carbon credit purchases highlight how big energy players are using voluntary carbon markets to decarbonize. Thus, its role for a lower-carbon future is of utmost significance.
The post TotalEnergies Boosts Carbon Credit Investment as LNG, Renewables Drive Q1 Gains appeared first on Carbon Credits.
The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.
The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.
This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.
The two definitions, in plain English
Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.
Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.
The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.
What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says
The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).
For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.
For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.
A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.
When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)
Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:
- The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
- The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
- The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
- It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.
The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.
When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.
The procurement and supplier engagement question
Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.
To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.
The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.
Choosing the right tool for the right target
A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.
The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.
If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.
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