Snapshot
- The Federal Court dismissed ACCR’s greenwashing claims against Santos, marking the first fully contested case globally to challenge a company’s emissions reduction targets and providing guidance on how climate‑related representations are assessed under the Australian Consumer Law framework.
- The decision emphasises that whether environmental or climate‑related commitments are misleading depends on context, including the intended audience and what a reasonable member of that audience would understand from the representations as a whole.
- Statements about net zero roadmaps, plans or targets are treated as representations of future matters requiring reasonable grounds, with the Court placing weight on the processes used to set those targets and on disclosures acknowledging technological, market and regulatory uncertainty.
In ACCR v Santos [2026] FCA 96, the Federal Court recently dealt a blow to the strategic litigation of greenwashing in Australia. On 17 February 2026, Justice Markovic dismissed the case brought by the Australian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (‘ACCR’), a shareholder advocacy organisation and Santos Ltd (‘Santos’) shareholder, alleging Santos engaged in greenwashing under s 1041H of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (‘Corporations Act’) and ss 18 and 33 of the Australian Consumer Law (‘ACL’), arising from investor‑facing statements about ‘clean’ energy, hydrogen and emissions targets.
The impugned statements in Santos’ investor materials fell into three categories, namely that:
- Santos produced ‘clean energy’ and its natural gas was ‘clean’ (‘Clean Energy Representations’);
- it would be able to produce ‘clean’ or ‘zero‑emissions’ hydrogen (‘Clean Hydrogen Representations’); and
- it had a credible plan and reasonable assumptions to meet a 2030 reduction target and net zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2040 (‘Target Representations’) (ACCR v Santos at [5]).
