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…
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…
Mycle Schneider, Steve Thomas, Antony Frogatt, Doug Koplow
Posted on:
1/13/2010
This Bulletin article is an extract from the longer and more detailed analysis prepared for the German Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Reactor Safety. The extract focuses primarily on the industry trends and does not address the subsidy components of the original report. …
Hundreds of government subsidies have fuelled the growth of ethanol and biodiesel in the USA, worth half or more their retail price. Cumulative costs under some mandate proposals exceed $1 trillion by 2030. Even using favourable assumptions, reduced greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels are far…
Mycle Schneider, Steve Thomas, Antony Froggatt, Doug Koplow
Posted on:
10/14/2009
The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2009 provides the reader with the basic quantitative and qualitative facts on the nuclear power plants in operation, under construction and in planning phases throughout the world. A detailed overview assesses the economic performance of past and current…
Federal Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) were nearly quintupled in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, mandating use of 36 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2022. Because key federal subsidies scale linearly with production without limit, biofuels will receive more than $400 billion…
A case study of the proposed new reactor at Calvert Cliffs in Lusby, MD provides a useful window into the dynamics and implications of federal nuclear policy today. The analysis demonstrates not only that the taxpayer ends up as the largest de facto investor in this project, but also that while we…
Government involvement in financing large scale energy projects has a checkered past. Historical forays into loan guarantees for biofuels and syn-fuels have been expensive failures. Large hydroelectric dams and federally-owned uranium enrichment facilities were built and operated as government…
Many organizations and key members of government believe that US energy markets need to embark on an accelerated transition off of oil. Some focus on diversification away from oil imports in order to stop funding countries that don't like us much. Others focus on climate change worries, working to…
Tracking energy subsidies for a single country is a challenging task; trying to measure them globally is even more so. Multi-country studies of fossil fuel studies have been done, and normally use a price gap measure. This approach compares the world price of the energy commodity with a transport…
This chapter reviews the major policy developments affecting the fuel-ethanol industry of the United States since the late 1970s, quantifies their value to the industry, and evaluates the efficacy of ethanol subsidization in achieving greenhouse gas reduction goals. Total support to ethanol is…
Extract from technical appendix of report by Doug Koplow for the Alliance to Save Energy. Detail on federal subsidies to decommissioning, waste disposal, accident liability, uranium enrichment, and regulatory oversight of the industry.
Doug Koplow, Dale Andrew, Jean Marc Burniaux, and Erkki Adorian
Posted on:
1/5/2009
(Word Document). Doug Koplow, Dale Andrew, Jean Marc Burniaux, and Erkki Adorian. OECD, Joint Working Party on Trade and Environment, September 2001. Also available in French.
Presentation to the World Bank Transport Forum outlines a number of
principles for good alternative fuel policy that focuses on displacing
petroleum consumption in transport rather than trying to select the
winning technology. (March 2007). A more detailed policy description,
for comment, can…
Formal comments outlining market distortions and structural weaknesses in DOE's multi-billion dollar program to subsidize favored energy technologies. Authorized under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the program creates a huge potential windfall to the nuclear sector. Also accessible…
Report. Summary slides from release.
Growing production and more subsidies converge to trigger an estimated
$93 billion in support to ethanol and biodiesel for the 2006-12
period. The report also contains a detailed review of the large and
potentially environmentally harmful biofuels…
