Each day Reint Jan Renes walks from Amsterdam’s main station to his office along the city’s canals and finds himself irritated by what he sees.
“We have this very, very beautiful old city, and you really have to look past all those signs that try to sell you something,” said Renes, a behavioral psychologist who studies sustainability in cities. He sees a tension between Amsterdam’s climate goal to be carbon neutral by 2050 and the steady stream of ads for cars, burgers and other high-carbon products that fill its streets.
Burning fossil fuels is a major driver of climate change. Transport — cars, aviation and shipping — accounts for about a quarter of global emissions, while meat and dairy produce the largest share of food-related greenhouse gases. “If you really take your own climate policy seriously, you should at least restrict the availability of all those promotional materials that promote and normalize high-carbon lifestyles,” Renes said.
Amsterdam has acted on that logic. It became the first national capital to ban ads for meat and fossil-fuel-related products on city-controlled infrastructure, covering home gas-heating contracts, flights, cruises and combustion-engine vehicles. The ban, which took effect on May 1, applies to 1,350 bus-shelter panels, 225 screens across metro stations and about 470 freestanding sidewalk panels.
Stockholm plans to follow this summer, and more than 50 other cities worldwide have similar restrictions, including Sydney, The Hague and Florence. France introduced a nationwide restriction in 2022; Spain is considering similar moves. “What these pioneering cities do is make other cities reflect, ‘How we organised our city is not necessarily how it has to be,’” said Jan Willem Bolderdijk, a professor of sustainability and marketing at the University of Amsterdam.
Why ban fossil fuel ads?
Oil and gas companies spend heavily on marketing and sponsorships — funding sports, museums and influencers — because advertising changes behaviour when it’s effective. Researchers at Greenpeace Netherlands and the New Weather Institute estimated that car and airline ads in the EU in 2019 could be responsible for up to 122 million tonnes of greenhouse gases, more than Belgium’s annual emissions. The intention behind bans is to remove companies’ ability to promote carbon-intensive products and to help shift attitudes about fossil fuel consumption, which in turn could reduce emissions.
Policy-makers point to the precedent of tobacco control. A review of global bans on tobacco advertising found they were linked to 20% lower odds of current smoking and a 37% reduced risk of people starting to smoke. Advocates argue the same logic applies to fossil fuels: advertising helps normalise high-carbon lifestyles and creates wants that might not otherwise exist — what economist John Kenneth Galbraith called the “dependence effect.” “We’ve adopted a relatively carbon-intensive lifestyle, and that lifestyle is partly normalised and created by advertisement,” Bolderdijk said.
But change is gradual. “Would this advertisement ban lead to behavioural changes overnight? Well, the answer is no,” Bolderdijk added. Still, proponents say bans chip away at norms, make alternatives more visible, and encourage other governments to adopt complementary policies.
Why critics aren’t convinced
Not everyone supports the move. Businesses and advertising firms, including JCDecaux, warned of financial and legal consequences and lobbied against Amsterdam’s policy. Conservative politicians criticised it as a restriction on freedom. Travel industry groups sued over The Hague’s ban, arguing it violated free speech and EU trade law. A Dutch court rejected those challenges, ruling that commercial advertising falls outside constitutional free-speech protections and that climate and health goals can justify trade restrictions.
The Amsterdam ban has limits. It covers only advertising on city-controlled infrastructure; shop owners may still display limited promotions outside their premises, and digital advertising remains untouched. Critics call the measure largely symbolic and warn that advertising restrictions alone won’t curb high-carbon consumption.
Supporters counter that ad bans are one tool among many. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says demand-side changes — shifts in consumer habits and lifestyles — could deliver 40–70% of the emissions reductions needed by 2050 if supported by the right policies, infrastructure and technologies. “It’s really a package of interventions that together can change these carbon-intensive social norms,” Bolderdijk said. “These fossil ad bans are just one of the many measures that are necessary.”
Edited by: Jennifer Collins