Energy
EIA Energy Subsidy Estimates: A Review of Assumptions and Omissions
This Review provides the most detailed look to date at gaps in federal tracking of energy subsidies. In addition to evaluating the research approach used by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the Review assesses how key assumptions and omissions in EIA's work resulted in a substantial undercounting of federal energy subsidies and an inaccurate portrayal of subsidy distribution across fuels. EIA estimates are also placed in the context of other assessments of domestic energy subsidies conducted over the past thirty years.
Sixty Years of U.S. Energy Subsidies: EIA Studies in Comparison with Other Research
Table comparing EIA energy subsidy estimates to a variety of other assessments conducted over the past 30 years in the United States.
Table extracted from Doug Koplow, EIA Energy Subsidy Estimates: A Review of Assumptions and Omissions, Earth Track, Inc., March 2010. Access full report. Access executive summary only.
Petroleum Product Subsidies: Costly, Inequitable, and Rising
Petroleum product subsidies have again started to rise with the rebound in international prices. This note reviews recent developments in subsidy levels and argues that it is necessary to reform the policy framework for setting petroleum product prices in order to reduce the fiscal burden of these subsidies and to address climate change. In 2003, global consumer subsidies for petroleum products totaled nearly $60 billion. They are projected to reach almost $250 billion in 2010.
Minding the Gap: Achieving Energy Success Via a Neutral Policy Platform
Review of key federal policy trends in the energy sector, identifying the unprecendented scale of interventions, and the inadequate attention being paid to incentive alignment and assessment of leverage points.
Beginning on slide 6, the presentation provides a specific review of how the government's large scale loan guarantee programs (such as under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the proposed much larger federal "Clean Energy Deployment Administration") are not structured to achieve proper risk management or high success rates.
Obama's nuclear power policy: a study in contradictions?
"President Obama has followed up on his support for 'a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,' laid out Jan. 27 in his State of the Union speech, by proposing to triple public financing for nuclear power...
"Budget hawks have a different set of concerns. They oppose government 'subsidies' to the industry (in the form of federal loan guarantees), saying taxpayers assume a huge risk given the industry's track record of cost overruns – and loan defaults – in the 1980s.
Achieving the G-20 Call to Phase Out Subsidies to Fossil Fuels
Policy brief reviewing proposed G-20 actions to phase out fossil fuel subsidies world wide. Brief discusses G-20 definition of subsidies, estimates of their global scale, and challenges ahead.
Reforming Energy Subsidies Opportunities to Contribute to the Climate Change Agenda
Patterns of energy production and use threaten the stability of
eco-systems and the health and well-being of current and future
generations. Still, energy subsidies worldwide amount to around USD
300.000 billion per year, or around 0.7 per cent of GDP.
Splash and Dash: The perils of subsidy
Somewhere in Germany, a trucker is thanking you. A biofuel executive is cursing you. You probably don’’t know it, but you paid $1 for each gallon of the Brazilian biodiesel fuel blend the trucker is using. The fuel-maker is upset because your generous contribution is driving down the price at which he can sell his product.
For their elation and disgust, for your impoverishment, and probably for some harm to the environment as well, you can blame the United States Congress. This all results from yet another misguided attempt to manipulate economic behavior through the tax code...
'Bailout' for Oil Companies $20-40 Billion (and maybe more) every year
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 30 (IPS) – Why do U.S. oil companies — some of the most profitable corporations on the planet — receive 20 to 40 billion dollars a year in subsidies from the U.S. government?
And, in a time of skyrocketing oil prices and profits, why did the George W. Bush administration in 2005 authorise an additional 32.9 billion dollars in new subsidies over a five-year period?
“Those are very good questions,” said Doug Koplow of Earth Track, Inc., an independent energy information research organisation in Boston, Massachusetts.