Z Energy. Photo: RNZ
Lawyers for Consumer NZ say Z Energy's Moving With The Times advertising campaign "vastly overstated" its climate change reduction credentials.
They said the company's claims of emission reductions were similar to a "tobacco company saying it was reducing the harm from cigarettes by saying it was delivering them more safely".
During 2022 and 2023 a large scale advertising campaign conducted through traditional media, print, television, billboards and pushed through social media outlined Z Energy's commitment to alternative fuels and emission reductions.
Acting for Consumer New Zealand, the Environmental Law Initiative and Climate Action New Zealand Incorporated, lawyer James Every-Palmer has argued the fuel supplier's advertising claims that they were on track with carbon reduction targets misled the public.
An Interlocutory application hearing - as a part of proceedings to determine whether the fuel supplier breached the Fair Trading Act - was underway in Wellington High Court Monday.
Lawyer for the fuel supplier, Victoria Heine said she hoped to narrow down an "extraordinarily large pool" of public statements to more specific claims to be tested in the hearings.
Heine complained that the large number of public statements would take "all week" to work through in order to test Consumer's claims of breaches of the Act.
Heine said the sides were in disagreement about the number of claims Z made within the campaign and the standards Consumer NZ alleged the fuel supplier had failed to meet.
Counsel for Z Energy saw nearly 50 statements among materials as relating to Consumer NZ's claims while their lawyers pointed to more than 100, she said.
Every-Palmer said Z Energy's statements about the company's ownership of a biofuel plant, installation of EV charging sites and efforts to step away from the petrol market had actually served to increase Z's market share - leading to greater use of fossil fuels a subsequent emissions increase.
He said the company was New Zealand's second highest greenhouse gas emitter accounting for nearly 15 percent of the country's emissions.
Z's claims of emission reductions related only to the company's own operating emissions, he said, and were akin to a "tobacco company saying it was reducing the harm from cigarettes by saying it was delivering them more safely".
The Moving With The Times campaign touted the company's ownership of a biofuel plant that had actually been mothballed in 2020 and their investment in EV charging facilities were "insubstantial by any measure", he said.
Any effort to refine the focus of the claims to specific items would fail to acknowledge the campaign's use of statements couched in optimistic imagery and music to create an overall impression of "trust and positivity" in the consumer, he said.
Associate Judge Grant Brittain KC - speaking via videolink from Auckland High Court - reserved his decision until the following week.