Campaigners say the research shows Total and other oil and gas majors have "stolen the precious time of a generation to stem the climate crisis”.

Campaigners described the newly announced sponsorship deal as "greenwash, plain and simple".

Responding to the analysis, Phil MacDonald, chief operating officer of Ember, said this was “exactly the kind of research that the UK government should be doing before it makes a decision on funding BECCS”. 

Academics have claimed the study "ignores" the risk of zoonotic disease from bushmeat hunting and seeks to "commodify" traditional hunting through tying it to carbon credit markets. 

Campaigners warn that the lack of events on the primary driver of climate change risks focus on the urgent need to keep oil, gas and coal in the ground being lost.

Academics called for the government to “move rapidly” to deliver low carbon heating solutions, in response to the research.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation has appointed a University College Dublin professor to its academic advisory council.

The government still contains four ministers who criticised “government-subsidised green technology” back in 2012, but one of them seems to have changed his mind about state intervention since then, and there are some new environmentally-friendly faces around too.

Geoffrey Supran, a climate researcher at Harvard University, said the UK government had its priorities “completely backwards” if the meetings could be seen as a proxy for where ministers were focusing attention.

Campaigners are urging ministers to "keep the coal in the ground" as an inquiry into the Whitehaven mine begins.