Christopher Beaton, Ivetta Gerasimchuk, Tara Laan, Kerryn Lang, Damon Vis-Dunbar, Peter Wooders
Posted on:
5/20/2013
There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for fossil-fuel subsidy reform-but there are a set of planning stages that are generic, along with many common issues, challenges and potential solutions. The Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) of the International Institute for Sustainable Development…
Since its creation of the domestic market for corn ethanol after the energy crisis of the 1970s, the federal government has nurtured and maintained the ethanol industry with a steady stream of subsidies. Originally sold as a way to achieve energy independence and reduce greenhouse gas emissions…
Energy subsidies have wide-ranging economic consequences. While aimed at protecting consumers, subsidies aggravate fiscal imbalances, crowd-out priority public spending, and depress private investment, including in the energy sector. Subsidies also distort resource allocation by encouraging…
The Department of Energy (DOE) is asking Congress to provide hundreds of millions in subsidies to commercialize small modular reactors (SMR). First proposed in the 2011 budget, the Administration has committed to providing more than $500 million dollars for licensing support and research and…
Doug Koplow (Earth Track) and Max Chang (Synapse Energy Economics)
Posted on:
1/31/2013
Hundreds of documents released from DOE under a Freedom of Information Request and subsequent litigation shed new light onto DOE's management of an $8.33 billion loan guarantee on offer to support the construction of two new nuclear units at the Vogtle reactor in Georgia. The documents raise…
As a researcher, and a as co-director of watchdog group that have both worked to draw attention to the significant subsidies and tax breaks that are lavished on the fossil fuel industry, we are eager to see elected officials take notice of this waste of taxpayer money, especially as the…
Presentation at the 124th Annual Meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners for a panel entitled "How Should Subsidies be Crafted to Ensure Usefulness as an Effective Tool to Achieve Energy Policy Objectives." The presentation discussed the range of energy subsidies…
Although data on fossil fuel subsidies around the world have been growing, most of this information focuses on national level policies. The thousands of subsidies at the state, provincial or local levels are largely untracked -- with little visibility either in the United States or in most other…
The United States has more operating installed geothermal capacity than any other country, contributing nearly one-third of global capacity. Much of the market build-out is due to investments by the U.S. government and DOE in the late 1970s and 1980s, and more recently, to federal tax incentives…
Although the oil shale industry is still in its commercial infancy, it has a long history of government support that continues today. The Bureau of Land Management recently issued two new research, development, and demonstration leases and new federal regulations for commercial leases and…
Despite a stated commitment to using market forces, the Romney campaign is turning a blind eye to large and distortionary subsidies to conventional fuels. This review highlights problems with how Romney has framed the energy subsidy problem and highlights important subsidies to fossil fuels that he…
The Financial Economist's Roundtable (FER) believes that use of FCRA accounting rules to calculate the budgetary costs of federal credit programs has resulted in the systematic understatement of the cost of these programs. This distortion occurs because of the failure of FCRA rules to account for…
The Government of India spent over US$ 9 billion subsidizing fuel products – diesel, kerosene, LPG and, to a lesser extent, gasoline – in 2010-11. The Government’s total subsidy expenditure (including for food and fertilizer) increased by nearly 27% in 2011-12, significantly contributing to the…
Webinar slides prepared for the Vote Solar Initiative to provide an overview of fossil fuel subsidies. The presentation discusses the informational gaps that often plague numbers on fossil fuel subsidies reported in the press, and provides a number of frameworks and tools to help Vote Solar members…
Table summarizing the ways G20 member countries have defined reportable subsidies to fossil fuels, and the gaps these definitions open up to missing entire classes of government support to the fossil fuels sector. The table has been extracted from Phasing Out Fossil-Fuel Subsidies in the G20: A…
This report is the latest of a string of assessments produced over the past 18 years to identify and quantify federal subsidies that harm the environment as well as waste prodigious amounts of money. The exact coalition producing the reports varies a bit year-to-year, but the Green Scissors…
In this, our second review of progress in meeting this phase out commitment (an earlier review was published in November 2010), we reviewed formal submittals by member countries to the G20 and the WTO, reached out individually to staff from each member country, and reviewed third-party assessments…
The nonproliferation principles we propose are intended to establish a framework for dealing with the main deficiencies in current NPT regime. These are: the notion that countries could amass the means for a weapons program under the NPT and the withdraw on 90-days notice; the idea that the…
For the past decade imports of tar sands crude oil or bitumen have been increasing. Tar sands is stripmined and drilled in an energy‐and water‐intensive process from under the Boreal forests and wetlands of Alberta. In the process, Canada is destroying critical habitat while releasing three times…