The International Energy Agency (IEA) is the world’s most influential source of energy information. Its stated aim is to support decisions in governments and in the private sector, “to ensure reliable, affordable and clean energy.”

To achieve this, it must advise governments and others on how to address the biggest energy challenge of the twenty-first century: preventing dangerous climate change. All 30 of the IEA’s member countries have signed the Paris Agreement, committing to keeping warming well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and pursuing efforts to keep it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

However, in this report we find that the IEA is holding governments back from achieving those goals. The IEA’s roadmap “New Policies Scenario” (NPS), the foremost guide to decisions on energy policies and investments, steers those decisions towards levels of fossil fuel use that would cause severe climate change