United Nations (UN) climate chief Christiana Figueres has called on the oil and gas industry to make a drastic shift to a clean, low-carbon future.

Figueres appealed to the industry to become the solution rather than the problem to addressing the causes of global warming at the international petroleum industry environmental conservation association (IPIECA) in London.

“The time for experimentation, for marginal changes and for conditional response is now over,” she said. She has called for an urgent transformation to greener production. “We need, and are undoubtedly moving towards a new, sustainable energy mix. What is exciting is that the oil and gas industry can actually be part of the solution,” she said.

According to Figueres, limiting global warming to an agreed UN ceiling means that three quarters of the fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground, and the fossil fuels that are used must be utilised sparingly and responsibly.

She warned the industry members that a stark reality check was in store for fossil fuel companies who ignore the problem. She said continued investment in high-cost, high-carbon projects is already beginning to negatively affect the bottom line of fossil fuel companies.

The climate chief also address the issue of fracking, saying that rising interest in unconventional sources of fossil fuels like shale gas need to be linked with investments in carbon capture and storage systems. She argued that greater efforts to reduce methane leakage from fracking sites.

“Gas cannot be used to irresponsibly delay the introduction of more renewables. But gas can be used to integrate renewable energy into the grid, given its ability to lower emissions immediately as the renewable energy infrastructure is built,” she said.

Figueres’s speech follows the release of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPPC) Climate Change 2014 report which details the impacts, future risks of climate change, as well as principles for effective adaptation