ITV report on TotalEnergies sportswashing at the 2025 Tour de France
From the peaks of the Alps to the streets of Paris, the Tour de France captivates millions with stories of endurance, speed, and spectacle. Yet far from the cheering crowds, in the remote rainforests of the Peruvian Amazon, another story is unfolding - one of dispossession, environmental harm, and a global system that links elite sport to ecological injustice.
A powerful new investigation by journalist Matt Rendell, commissioned by the Badvertising campaign for ITV, reveals how fossil fuel sponsorship is casting a long shadow over cycling’s most iconic event. While riders push for glory, TotalEnergies is using the Tour to greenwash its image as its business operations fuel climate breakdown and land injustice.
Watch Matt Rendell’s full report for ITV below to learn more about the true cost of fossil fuel sponsorship in sport.
The report exposes how TotalEnergies, a major sponsor of both the Tour de France and two of its leading teams, is linked to the loss of Indigenous land rights in the Peruvian Amazon. There, Kichwa communities say they’ve been denied access to their ancestral forests which are now being used to generate carbon credits bought by TotalEnergies to offset its vast emissions.
The company has spent $84.7 million on offsets from Peru — a move campaigners say allows it to claim progress on climate while continuing to drill, burn, and pollute. And through its high-profile Tour sponsorship, TotalEnergies broadcasts this message to millions of fans worldwide.
TotalEnergies rebranded from “Total” in 2021 and quickly made its cycling team a symbol of the supposed transformation. Riders like Alexis Vuillermoz praised the new identity as “representing tomorrow’s society.” But regulatory bodies have increasingly called out the company’s claims as misleading:
A German court banned it from marketing heating oil as “CO₂-compensated” based on the Peruvian offsets.
South Africa’s ad authority ruled that its sustainability messaging was deceptive.
And in April 2024, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority found the company had breached greenwashing rules in a major climate ad campaign.
Meanwhile, TotalEnergies’ logo features not only on its own team kit, but on other squads like Ineos Grenadiers, and now as an “official energy partner” of the Tour de France itself.
The next Grand Départ will take place in Edinburgh, a city preparing to introduce tobacco-style bans on fossil fuel advertising. With the logo of TotalEnergies featured across the tournament - amongst other high-carbon sponsors - Edinburgh Council decision-makers must now consider how to enforce the city’s ban.
In 2024, Marisol García Apagüeño travelled to France to share her story - speaking with French lawmakers and protesting along the Tour route. Her message, captured in Rendell’s report, is a powerful call to action for those watching the race:
“You could help us change things by raising your voices and not sitting in your home supporting all these big sporting events financed by polluting companies that are destroying life in our home. Because this planet is everyone’s home.”