Every oil and gas company’s transition strategy can and should include a plan to reduce emissions from its own operations, asserts the report – yet companies with targets to reduce their emissions account for less than 50% of global oil and gas output.

The IEA also points out that carbon capture can’t be used as a linchpin by the fossil fuel industry to maintain the status quo. If oil and natural gas consumption were to evolve as projected under today’s policy settings, limiting the temperature rise to 1.5C would require an “entirely inconceivable” 32 billion tonnes of carbon captured for utilization or storage by 2050, including 23 billion tonnes via direct air capture.

The amount of electricity needed to power these technologies would be greater than the entire world’s electricity demand today.