The age of oil and gas exploration is already over and no new fields will need to be developed if the world succeeds in bringing global warming under control, the International Energy Agency has said.

In a landmark report on the path to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the organisation (IEA) says that oil demand will need to drop by 75pc over the next three decades - rendering the need to exploit new reserves obsolete. No further coal mines will be needed either.

Its forecasts suggest that the age of fossil fuels is coming to an abrupt end, and could raise fresh fears that investors have ploughed billions of pounds into worthless oil and gas projects.

The IEA - whose 30 member states include the UK, US, Germany and France but not China, the biggest carbon emitter - also calls for a worldwide ban on new petrol and diesel cars from 2035, and says that a dramatic increase in solar power will be needed to turbocharge the green revolution.

Panels equal in size to the world's largest solar park must be added every day as part of a colossal overhaul of power sources, it says in the report released today.

It expects natural gas use to drop 50pc as hydrogen and electric pumps take a bigger role in home heating, while batteries will replace petrol and diesel in cars.

The IEA report says: “Fossil fuel use falls drastically in the net-zero emissions scenario by 2050 and no new oil and natural gas fields are required beyond those already approved for development.

“No new coal mines or mine extensions are required. Low-emission fuels - biogases, hydrogen, and hydrogen-based fuels - see rapid growth.”

The global energy system is already undergoing a huge overhaul, with money pouring into renewables and oil and gas behemoths such as BP and Shell pledging to slash their carbon emissions.

But the stark vision of an end to the development of new oil and gas fields is likely to send tremors through the industry, and bolster calls from activists for projects to be ditched now. The IEA said investment in existing projects will continue to be needed.

In 2019, then-Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said that millions of savers' pension funds could lose their value because of the switch away from oil and gas development.

The IEA report has been published six months ahead of the United Nations' Cop26 international climate change conference, which will be hosted in Glasgow by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Countries from around the world will meet to try and build on the agreements set out at Cop21 in Paris in 2015 to limit global warming to well below 2C, and preferably to 1.5C.

The UK two years ago became the first major economy to pledge to slash greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.

The IEA said several other countries have since followed suit, with net zero pledges now covering around 70pc of global GDP and CO2 emissions.

But executive director Dr Fatih Birol warned global greenhouse gas emissions continued to grow and said: “This gap between rhetoric and action needs to close if we are to have a fighting chance of reaching net zero by 2050 and limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees.

“Doing so requires nothing short of a total transformation of the energy systems that underpin our economies. We are in a critical year at the start of a critical decade for these efforts.”

The UK is already ahead on some of the IEA’s calls, with its own ban on the sales of new petrol and diesel cars bought forward to 2030. It has also set out plans to quadruple the amount of offshore wind.

However, ministers have so far stopped short of naming a date for when oil and gas exploration licences in the North Sea will no longer be allowed.

Instead, new licencing rounds will be subject to a ‘climate compatibility checklist’ and will not go ahead if they are deemed to be incompatible with the UK’s net zero goals.

The IEA said it is mindful that any overhaul of the energy system needs to be fair and that developing economies must get any help they need to help provide energy in a sustainable way.

Greenpeace said the report makes clear that there is no need or justification for new oil and gas wells in the North Sea.

Charlie Kronick, senior climate adviser for Greenpeace UK, added: “Yet the UK government undermines any claims to climate leadership by planning to press ahead with more oil and gas extraction.

“To deliver on this government’s own climate rhetoric, and what the IEA now demands, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng must rule out new oil and gas licences.”