Earth Track Document

The Permian is by far the largest oil producing basin in the United States and the second largest for natural gas. Firms in the region have been highly profitable, yet have continued to benefit from a wide array of government subsidies. Some of the subsidies have been in place for decades, though new ones continue to be introduced as well. All of the subsidies work against the need to decarbonize our economy and erode the competitive positioning of lower-carbon substitutes.

The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023 (WNISR2023) provides a comprehensive overview (in 549 pages) of the status and trends within the international nuclear industry, including data on nuclear power plant starts and operation, production, fleet age, and construction. The WNISR evaluates the status of newbuild programs in existing as well as in potential newcomer nuclear countries, and looks at the status of Small Modular Reactor (SMR) development.

Even California has scores of policies and programs with the potential to subsidize oil and gas exploration, production, refining, transport, and consumption. These conflict with the state's long-term commitment to be a clean energy leader.

An overview on the varied approaches used to subsidize industries and how the scale of support flowing to fossil fuels and other environmentally harmful activities undermines efforts to decarbonize the economy and protect global biodiversity. The slides highlight how at present subsidies to fossil fuel greatly exceed carbon revenues from taxes and permits, and environmentally harmful subsidies overall greatly exceed EHS reduction targets agreed to under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

This article was originally published on Bloomberg Tax here. Reproduced with permission. Published January 13, 2023. Copyright 2023 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (800-372-1033) 

Ron Steenblik and Doug Koplow join the Cosmopolicast (part of the Cosmopolitan Globalist) and hosts Claire Berlinski and Vivek Y. Kelkar for an hour of discussion about energy subsidies and environmentally-harmful subsidies. How did we end up working on this issue? How big are they? How can people better understand the opaque, perverse, and often counterproductive nature of energy subsidies?

Harvard Management Company is responsible for investing the Harvard endowment. The annual Climate Report is the primary way that HMC communicates with the general public on its actions to move the portfolio to net zero by 2050. Though this is the second year the Climate Report has been produced, reporting remains sparse and overly general. The result is a document that is largely unhelpful in properly evaluating HMC's progress, interim milestones, and key challenges. Earth Track has provided detailed commentary on the second Climate Report in the attached document.

Industry-specific reviews of government subsidies have been much more common than analyses examining several natural resource sectors at once. Yet there is a great deal of overlap across sectors. Indeed, it is the combination of support provided by multiple levels of government and government programs, across numerous natural resource areas, that can accelerate resource depletion, pollution, or habitat loss in particular regions.

The United States has supported the development of its oil and gas industry since the early twentieth century. Despite repeated pledges to phase out 'inefficient' fossil fuel subsidies, US oil and gas production continues to be subsidized by billions of dollars each year. In this study, we quantify how 16 subsidies and regulatory exemptions individually and altogether affect the economics of US oil and gas production in 2020–2030 under different price and financial risk outlooks.