"We cannot let the financial and economic crisis delay the policy action that is urgently needed to ensure secure energy supplies and to curtail rising emissions of greenhouse gases," Nobuo Tanaka, head of the Paris-based IEA, said in a statement Wednesday. "We must usher in a global energy revolution by improving energy efficiency and increasing the deployment of low-carbon energy."

Tanaka's remarks come as the IEA Wednesday in London launched its annual global energy analysis -- the World Energy Outlook 2008. The report examines different climate protection scenarios as well as global energy supply and demand, by looking at dwindling fossil fuel reserves and the rise of renewables such as wind, solar and hydro power.

It criticizes the world's energy consumption, which is projected to further rise over the next decades because of economic growth in India, China and the Middle East.

"Current trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable -- environmentally, economically and socially -- they can and must be altered," Tanaka said.

"Rising imports of oil and gas into Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development regions and developing Asia, together with the growing concentration of production in a small number of countries, would increase our susceptibility to supply disruptions and sharp price hikes," he said, adding that this would spell disaster for climate protection efforts.

The IEA says the business-as-usual scenario would drive up global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 percent by 2030. This puts "the world on track for an eventual global temperature increase of up to 6 degrees Celsius," Tanaka said.

Experts have warned that a temperature increase greater than 2 degrees Celsius could have catastrophic effects on global security.

The IEA notes that demand for dirty coal will rise significantly, mainly because of more and more coal-fired power plants in emerging countries. A bright spot on the horizon is the rise of renewables: They will overtake gas as the second-largest source of electricity, behind coal "soon after 2010," the IEA said.

But what about oil? Several reports have warned of a peak of global oil production with potentially catastrophic consequences for the economy. The IEA says oil will remain the world's main source of energy for years to come, even under the most optimistic of assumptions about the development of alternative technology.

Yet the sources of oil, the cost of producing it and the prices that consumers will have to pay for it are extremely uncertain. "One thing is certain," Tanaka said, "while market imbalances will feed volatility, the era of cheap oil is over." Energy security is threatened by declining production, financial speculators and the increasing monopoly-like power of national oil companies, which are "projected to account for about 80 percent of the increase of both oil and gas production to 2030," Tanaka said.

Because the financial crisis drove down prices for a barrel of crude from its July peak of $147 to less than $60, oil producers are now debating whether to halt investments in supply infrastructure. This increases the threat of a supply crunch by 2015, Tanaka said.

According to the IEA, some 30 million barrels per day of new capacity is needed by 2015.

"There remains a real risk that under-investment will cause an oil-supply crunch in that time frame," it said, adding that oil producers need to spend more than $26 trillion to ensure adequate supplies.

The report also looks at two different climate protection scenarios, limiting the temperature rise to 3 degrees and 2 degrees Celsius, respectively.

The less ambitious scenario foresees the share of low-carbon energy sources -- such as renewables, nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage-based fossil fuel plants -- in the world primary energy mix to expand from 19 percent in 2006 to 26 percent in 2030. This would call for an additional $4.1 trillion in infrastructure investments, the IEA said.

Capping the temperature rise at 2 degrees Celsius is much more challenging.

"We would need concerted action from all major emitters," Tanaka said, adding that OECD countries alone could not put the world onto a 2 degree Celsius path even if they were to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to zero.

Instead, all nations would have to come together to create a low-carbon energy economy, which should account for 36 percent of the world's energy supplies by 2030.

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