A forbidding ‘moment of truth’ will confront the oil and gas industry at the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) Climate Change Summit in Dubai, as this is the main sector being pressed for radical reduction in carbon emissions so it can keep pace with the 1.5 °C global temperature rise limit set forth in the Paris Agreement.

According to a report by the Paris-headquartered International Energy Agency (IEA), “all oil and gas companies should commit to tackling emissions from their own operations.”

It emphasized that the emissions of the oil and gas sector “need to decline by 60% by 2030 to align with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C,” and their methane emissions must also be pared by up to 75%.

The role of the oil and gas sector in the ‘energy transition agenda’ is highly critical, the IEA said, because this is a mammoth industry that has been providing more than half of global energy supply.

The Paris-based agency further stated that the oil and gas players are warranted to pursue dramatic shifts in the allocation of their financial resources, primarily when it comes to stepping up on their clean energy investments.

As noted by the international energy think tank, global oil and gas firms just funneled measly 2.5% of their total capital spending to clean energy ventures last year.

The IEA report thus specified that if these oil and gas producers would align with the aims of the Paris Agreement, they must “put 50% of capital expenditures towards clean energy projects by 2030.”

Industry players in the oil and gas sector were also reminded it’s about time for them to “abandon the notion that they can continue with business-as-usual simply by ramping up the deployment of carbon capture technologies.”

The IEA stressed “if oil and gas consumption were to evolve as projected under today’s policy settings, limiting warming to 1.5 °C would require an entirely inconceivable 32 billion tonnes of carbon capture by 2050.”

The scale of investments required for that, it reckoned, would reach up to $3.5 trillion by the turn of the decade from last year’s base of $4.0 billion.

Beyond prescriptions for the oil and gas industry, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol will also present ‘energy package’ at the COP28 that shall serve as five key pillars for the world to be on track in meeting 2030 climate goals.

As fleshed out by the agency, these shall include: tripling of global renewable energy capacity; doubling the rate of energy efficiency improvements; oil and gas companies committing to advancing clean energy transitions and slashing emissions from their operations; establishing large-scale financing mechanisms to support clean energy investments in emerging and developing economies; and adopting measures to ensure an orderly decline in the use of fossil fuels.