Supporting TotalEnergies to manage global nature-related risks and long-term opportunities
Organisation’s ambition
TotalEnergies is a global energy company with operations spanning oil and gas, renewables, and energy storage. As a top-tier player in the sector, the company operates across diverse geographies, including regions with heightened biodiversity risk. While their public biodiversity commitments align with industry peers, such as avoiding World Heritage Sites and Arctic sea ice areas and applying IFC PS6 at selected locations, TotalEnergies is seeking to go further. They are currently ranked 5th out of 30 leading European businesses for their biodiversity policies, commitments, and actions, and are actively enhancing their internal approach to biodiversity risk management to ensure greater consistency, rigour, and accountability across their global portfolio.
Our approach - Co-developing practical frameworks and guidance to manage biodiversity risk across a global portfolio
The Biodiversity Consultancy (TBC) has collaborated with TotalEnergies for over a decade, supporting a wide range of initiatives including:
- Supported delivery on the ground, e.g. conducting Critical Habitat Assessments to understand biodiversity risk, leading development of monitoring and evaluation plan and collecting baseline data, and supporting development of offset strategy across Africa to align with IFC Performance Standard 6
- Delivered corporate-level work such as a Nature Positive Initiative gap analysis, nature-based solutions strategy, annual PS6 training, and sector biodiversity benchmarking
- Enabled biodiversity management and reporting at scale and informed decision-making by co-developing the Biodiversity Impact Footprint from Sites (BFIS) framework [A description of the framework and the methodology can be found on this webpage]
BFIS is a framework designed to evaluate, manage, monitor and report biodiversity impacts across a company’s site-based portfolio. This framework enables TotalEnergies to:
- Identify high-risk sites across its global operations
- Provide detailed guidance for action planning, monitoring, and reporting
- Align with emerging frameworks and regulations in a pragmatic, scalable way
The BFIS framework stands out for its usability and potential to catalyse action across the company’s direct operations. Its design makes it accessible for other companies, multiplying its potential impact, and both TotalEnergies and TBC support the tool’s uptake across sectors.
Outcome - Progressing BFIS to accelerate measurable biodiversity impact
Through our long-term partnership with TotalEnergies, TBC helped turn biodiversity commitments into action and the BFIS is one of them. TotalEnergies is open to making the BFIS framework publicly available.
As part of the joined willingness of enabling access to better biodiversity data, ensuring transparency of the methodology and challenging the robustness and practicality of the approach, TBC and TotalEnergies have started a public consultation on BFIS framework in September 2025.
By sharing the BFIS framework through practitioner forums, including the IUCN-IMEC group or the IUCN Congress, TBC and TotalEnergies are embedding biodiversity into corporate decision-making and accelerating sector-wide progress toward nature positive outcomes.
