France’s parliament has just passed a law banning production of oil and gas by 2040.

The French are also banning the extraction of shale gas – by any means. Fracking to extract shale is already banned in the country. France also plans to stop the sale of diesel and petrol engine cars by 2040.

Though the recently passed law is largely symbolic as the country is 99 per cent dependent on hydrocarbon imports, yet it is indicative of the mood in important global capitals. President Emmanuel Macron said he wanted France to take lead as a major world economy switching away – from fossil fuels and the nuclear industry – into renewable sources. French lawmaker Delphine Batho said she hoped the ban would be “contagious”, inspiring bigger producers to follow suit.

The World Bank is also stopping to fund oil and gas projects. World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim, while addressing an international climate summit earlier this month, said the institution will stop all lending for oil and gas projects after 2019, with the exception of certain gas projects in the poorest countries facing exceptional circumstances.

Greenpeace International climate campaigner Gyorgy Dallos was quoted as saying in the press: “The end is clearly coming for the oil and gas industry as the pace of change accelerates.”

Dallos underlined the Bank had sent a damning vote of no confidence in the future of the fossil fuel industry.

Mid-November, the Norwegian central bank, which runs the country’s sovereign wealth fund – the world’s biggest – suggested the government it should dump its shares in oil and gas companies, as it no more advisable.

The Norwegian government said it would consider the proposal, but a decision should not be expected until next year and a “thorough assessment” was required.

A fossil fuel exporter, about 20pc of Norway’s GDP comes from the sale of oil to the rest of the world. Yet, for its part, the country appears serious about transitioning away from fossil fuels and setting an example for the rest of the world. Last month, it was reported that the Norwegian government is being sued by climate activists over a decision to open up areas of the Arctic Ocean for oil exploration, a move they say endangers the lives of existing and future generations.

The country is sensitive to such allegations. Only last June, it announced banning the sale of all fossil fuel-based cars by 2025. Already about 24pc of the country’s cars run on electricity, and the country is a heavy producer of renewable energy with more than 99pc of electricity covered by hydropower. Norway is also aiming to triple its capacity of wind power by 2020 with a new $3 billion investment in the sector approved in 2013.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands is also looking to enact a 100pc non-fossil fuel vehicle fleet standard by 2025 and India too, is exploring a similar option for 2030. As per a recent paper, the UK has also witnessed a 25pc rise in renewable energy investments.

Faced with climate challenges, Beijing too has called for one out of every five cars sold in China to run on alternative fuel by 2025. In September 2017, China issued new rules that would require the world’s carmakers to sell more alternative-energy cars in the country, if they wanted to sell regular ones. A Chinese official told the press; the country would eventually do away with the internal combustion engine in new cars. Already, China is the world’s largest maker and seller of electric cars.

The move towards EV is placing the automobile makers in a quandary. “Seventy per cent of oil consumption is as a transportation fuel. So, if you move those numbers in the long-term it can cause titanic shifts,” Dan Eberhart, an oil executive who owns Canary, one of the largest oil drilling wellhead manufacturers was quoted as saying in the press.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects the number of electric vehicles on the road to reach as many as 20 million by 2020 and between 40m and 70m by 2025, from 2m last year.

Yet it hinted, more aggressive scenarios using different policy targets, including the Paris climate agreement goals, could see the vehicle number jump much higher by 2030.

Consequent to all this, a tectonic shift in global crude demand seems very much in the making. Energy markets could not skip its consequences in the longer term – one could underline here with some certainty.

The oil era appears fading – albeit slowly.

Published in Dawn, December 24th, 2017