The transition from fossil fuels must be carefully managed to avoid an economically disastrous bursting of the “carbon bubble,” the World Bank’s top climate official said.

Decades of reliance on oil, gas and coal have made them central to the global economy, and polluting industries risk a potentially catastrophic crash as the world shifts to alternative energies, said Rachel Kyte, the bank’s special envoy for climate change.

“If we accept that we need to have less carbon in our growth, then we might have a financial risk associated with the prominence in our economy of companies who are heavily invested in carbon. That’s the whole question of the carbon bubble,” Kyte said on the sidelines of the World Bank’s annual meeting in Lima, Peru.

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