Integrity Briefing: Z Energy's greenwashing saga and what it says about corporate power

This weekend, Z Energy did something rare in corporate New Zealand: it apologised. Sort of. After years of legal wrangling, the country’s biggest fuel importer settled a landmark greenwashing case with Consumer NZ, Lawyers for Climate Action, and the Environmental Law Initiative. Z’s 2022 advertising campaign had boldly proclaimed the company was “in the business of getting out of the petrol business”, which is a claim that turned out to be about as accurate as declaring you’re quitting smoking while lighting up your next cigarette.

The settlement, announced yesterday, represents one of New Zealand’s most significant challenges to corporate green claims. But it also exposes something more troubling: the sophisticated machinery of influence that fossil fuel companies deploy to maintain their social licence while continuing business as usual. This isn’t just about one misleading ad campaign. It’s about how corporate power operates in the shadows, using PR firms, advertising agencies, and lobbying to shape public opinion and policy outcomes.

The Art of the non-apology

Z Energy’s apology is a masterclass in having your cake and eating it too. The company says sorry for “any confusion caused” while simultaneously maintaining it never actually misled anyone. Both sides “agreed to disagree” – that most New Zealand of compromises – with no admission of liability and no financial penalty. It’s the corporate equivalent of saying “I’m sorry you feel that way”.

CEO Lindis Jones told the Sunday Star Times the campaign was meant to be “bold and provocative”. That’s one way to put it. Another way would be: deliberately misleading. The campaign launched in April 2022 featured full-page newspaper ads, television spots with Māori filmmaker Ray Edwards, and a waiata from musician Rob Ruha, all promoting Z’s supposed commitment to cleaner energy and “creating a better Aotearoa”.

But here’s what Z didn’t emphasise in those feel-good ads: the biofuels plant they boasted about building was being shut down. The “rapid expansion” of their EV charging network? Only a dozen or so of Z’s 286 retail sites had chargers at the time. And when Z talked about being “well on track” to meet carbon reduction targets, they were only counting their operational emissions (company cars and office electricity) not the nearly 15 percent of New Zealand’s total emissions that come from the fuel they sell to customers.

Jon Duffy, chief executive of Consumer NZ, called it “one of the worst examples of greenwashing in New Zealand’s history”. That’s not hyperbole. This was a calculated campaign designed to make New Zealanders feel better about filling up at Z stations, to position the company as part of the climate solution rather than a major contributor to the crisis.

The Australian connection

What often gets lost in coverage of Z Energy is who actually owns this supposedly homegrown Kiwi brand. In May 2022, Australian fuel giant Ampol completed its purchase of Z Energy for close to $2 billion. Z is now wholly owned by Australian interests, yet it continues to trade on its “Z is for New Zealand” branding, created back in 2011 when Infratil and the NZ Superannuation Fund bought Shell’s local operations.

This matters because the greenwashing playbook Z deployed isn’t unique to New Zealand. It’s part of a global pattern. Ampol itself was named Australia’s most heavily marketed fossil fuel brand, employing numerous PR and advertising agencies to polish its image. Z Energy followed suit, working with at least five different agencies on various campaigns – more than any other fossil fuel company in New Zealand.

The recently released “F-List” from climate advocacy groups Comms Declare and Clean Creatives names 14 New Zealand agencies working for fossil fuel clients. Z Energy features prominently, employing Supernormal, Chemistry, and MBM for its current campaigns, with Saatchi & Saatchi having previously created the controversial “Moving with the Times” platform. This is how modern influence works: not through crude lobbying alone, but through sophisticated communications strategies designed to manufacture consent and maintain social licence.

One particularly egregious example highlighted by the F-List is Wright Communications, a boutique PR agency that’s both carbon-neutral and B-Corp certified, yet works for Z Energy and Toyota. The agency received a satirical “Greenwashing Excellence” award for this apparent hypocrisy. Wright’s CEO defended the relationship by claiming that staying “in the tent” with fossil fuel clients allows the agency to push for lower emissions internally. That’s a convenient rationalisation for taking money from climate polluters while maintaining your green credentials.

The Transparency gap

What makes this situation particularly concerning for anyone interested in political integrity is how much of this influence network remains hidden. New Zealand has no public lobbyist register, making us one of the few comparable democracies without one. Countries like Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland all maintain public lobbying registers. We simply don’t know who’s lobbying for fossil fuel companies, what they’re saying to politicians, or how many contracts are in place.

This opacity creates space for exactly the kind of influence Z Energy and other fossil fuel interests have been exercising. Consider the policy environment: the current Government has reversed the ban on oil and gas exploration, provided $200 million in co-funding for fossil fuel companies, cut environmental rules around new extraction projects, and appointed John Carnegie – a long-time fossil fuel lobbyist from Energy Resources Aotearoa – to the board of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. That last appointment was made against the advice of recruiters.

These decisions didn’t emerge from a vacuum. They’re the result of sustained lobbying and influence campaigns. But without a lobbyist register, we can’t see the full picture. We don’t know which ministers met with which industry representatives, what was discussed, or what promises might have been made. The PR and advertising campaigns revealed by the F-List are just the public face of a much larger influence operation.

Markets, trust, and truth

There’s an irony in the settlement terms that deserves highlighting. Z Energy and the three advocacy groups jointly agreed that “markets work best when consumers can rely on the truthfulness of claims to make purchasing decisions”. This is particularly true, they note, for green claims, “which are difficult for consumers to verify”.

But markets only work when information is accurate and accessible. When companies like Z Energy engage in greenwashing, they’re not just misleading individual consumers, they’re corrupting the market itself. They’re making it impossible for genuinely sustainable businesses to compete on a level playing field, and they’re undermining the public’s ability to make informed choices about how to reduce their carbon footprint.

Consumer NZ’s research shows that nearly half of New Zealanders find it difficult to tell the truthfulness of environmental claims, and three-quarters have never checked green claims to see if they’re accurate. Why would they? Most people don’t have time to wade through corporate annual reports and emissions inventories to fact-check advertising. They rely on companies to be truthful. When that trust is betrayed, it damages not just one company’s reputation but the entire system of market-based environmental action.

And here’s the thing: Z Energy’s greenwashing worked. Following the “Moving with the Times” campaign, Z was rated New Zealand’s most preferred fuel brand. Its market share increased. Its fuel sales in 2023 were the highest they’d been in five years. The company’s total emissions continued to rise even as it claimed to be “getting out of the petrol business”.

The Commerce Commission’s failure

One of the most troubling aspects of this case is what it reveals about regulatory failure. When Lawyers for Climate Action first complained to the Commerce Commission in 2022 about Z Energy’s misleading advertising, the Commission refused to investigate. It acknowledged there were issues but said only the courts could determine if the Fair Trading Act had been breached.

This is regulatory abdication dressed up as legal prudence. The Commerce Commission has enforcement powers specifically to deal with misleading advertising. It has published Environmental Claims Guidelines. It has repeatedly said greenwashing is a concern. But when faced with one of the most egregious examples of corporate greenwashing in New Zealand history, it punted the responsibility to three small not-for-profit organisations to take on a major corporation in the High Court.

Jon Duffy put it bluntly: “The Commerce Commission has been extremely hesitant to take greenwashing cases. This settlement is an indication to the commission that where there’s smoke, there’s fire”. That’s diplomatic language for: the Commission has been asleep at the wheel.

To its credit, the Commission did recently issue a warning to Kmart for making unsubstantiated “100% sustainably sourced cotton” claims. But that came in August 2025, years after the Z Energy case began. The pattern suggests the Commission waits for advocacy groups to do the heavy lifting before it acts. That’s not how robust enforcement is supposed to work.

Commerce Minister Scott Simpson’s response to the Z Energy settlement was equally tepid, simply noting that the government is “progressing changes to the Fair Trading Act to strengthen its enforcement regime” and reminding businesses that environmental claims “must be truthful, backed by evidence, and not misleading”. Thanks for that stunning insight, Minister.

The Real cost of delay

The Z Energy case took nearly three years to resolve and cost all parties hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to settlement documents. The charities behind the case (Consumer NZ, Lawyers for Climate Action, and the Environmental Law Initiative) are cagey about exactly how it was funded, though the Environmental Law Initiative acknowledged receiving $1.7 million primarily from the T-Gear Charitable Trust, which also bankrolls the Green Party.

If the case had gone to full trial, a decision wouldn’t have been reached until 2028. That would be six years after the misleading advertising first appeared. As Jon Duffy noted, “That’s nearly six years from when the actual advertising went out in the public. It isn’t good enough, given the urgency of climate change”.

He’s right. Climate change doesn’t wait for the legal system to grind through its processes. Every year that companies like Z Energy can greenwash with impunity is another year of delay in the genuine transition away from fossil fuels. Every misleading campaign makes it harder to build the public and political consensus needed for serious climate action.

This is why some jurisdictions are moving toward outright bans on fossil fuel advertising. France has already implemented one, and similar proposals are being considered elsewhere. The argument is simple: we banned tobacco advertising because cigarettes cause cancer. Fossil fuel emissions are destroying the climate. Why should companies be allowed to advertise products that pose an existential threat?

A Global reckoning?

The Z Energy settlement comes amid growing international scrutiny of fossil fuel greenwashing. In October, a French court ruled that oil major TotalEnergies misled consumers by claiming it could become carbon neutral by 2050. The court ordered the company to remove the statements or face daily fines. This was the first time France’s greenwashing law has been applied to a fossil fuel company.

In Australia, Energy Australia apologised and settled a greenwashing case brought by Australian Parents for Climate Action. The patterns are consistent: fossil fuel companies make bold claims about their environmental commitments while their business models remain fundamentally unchanged. They invest tiny fractions of their budgets in renewable energy while spending millions on advertising that overstates these token gestures.

Research by Christian Downie at the Australian National University found that oil and gas lobby groups spent A$1.5 billion on public relations and advertising between 2008 and 2018. What did this money buy? Astroturfing campaigns featuring hired actors posing as concerned citizens. Front groups with names like “Energy Citizens” and “Australians for Natural Gas” designed to look like grassroots movements. Sophisticated polling and focus groups to identify the most effective messaging. And crucially, political influence.

This is the ecosystem in which Z Energy operates. The advertising campaigns we see are just the visible tip of a much larger influence operation. Without transparency about lobbying, without a register showing who’s meeting with politicians and what they’re advocating for, we’re flying blind.

The Bigger picture

The Z Energy greenwashing saga isn’t really about one company’s misleading advertising. It’s about how corporate power operates in New Zealand’s supposedly transparent democracy. It’s about the army of PR professionals and advertising creatives whose job is to manufacture social licence for climate-destroying industries.

Most troublingly, it’s about how easily this system continues to function despite growing public awareness of the climate crisis. Z Energy’s CEO can go on the record saying the campaign was meant to be “provocative”, issue a half-hearted apology, and carry on selling fossil fuels. The agencies that created the misleading campaigns face no real consequences beyond being named on a list most New Zealanders will never see. The government officials who enabled industry’s influence operate in the shadows of our non-existent lobbyist register.

This is what corporate power looks like in 2025: sophisticated, well-funded, legally complex and largely invisible. It doesn’t need crude bribery or brown envelopes of cash. It works through carefully crafted messages, strategic relationships, and the capture of regulatory processes. It thrives on complexity and opacity.

The fact that three small not-for-profit organizations had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars over three years to get a non-apology from Z Energy should concern anyone who cares about accountability. That’s a system rigged in favour of well-resourced corporations over the public interest.

As climate change accelerates and the need for genuine action becomes more urgent, we can’t afford this level of corporate obfuscation. We need transparency about who’s influencing whom, strong enforcement against misleading environmental claims, and a media and political class willing to call out greenwashing for what it is: a deliberate strategy to delay the transition away from fossil fuels while maintaining profitability.

Z Energy says it anticipates “a material decline in petrol into the middle of next decade” – a drop of perhaps 30 to 50 percent. That’s hardly the revolutionary exit from the petrol business the company advertised. And it’s subject, as CEO Lindis Jones carefully noted, “to government policy and the evolution of technology”. Translation: we’ll sell as much fossil fuel as the market and regulators let us get away with, for as long as we can.

That’s the truth Z Energy should have put in its advertising. But truth doesn’t sell petrol as effectively as greenwashing does. And until we fix the broken systems that allow this deception to flourish, we’ll keep seeing more of the same.

Dr Bryce Edwards

Director of The Integrity Institute

Further Reading:

Bill Hickman and Gyles Beckford (RNZ): Z Energy apologises for 2022 ad campaign after legal action

Andrea Vance (Sunday Star Times): Z Energy apologises over ‘getting out of petrol’ ad as fossil fuel greenwashing faces global reckoning (paywalled)

Jonathan Milne (Newsroom): Settlement gets Z Energy out of court – not ‘out of the petrol business’

Ian Llewellyn (BusinessDesk): Z Energy settles ‘greenwashing’ case without admitting liability (paywalled)

Comms Declare: The F-List