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Consumer Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Consumer subsidies are often applied in order to reduce the price of energy to consumers mainly through government controls on the cost of fossil fuels or power.

Hope on the horizon: Will the G-20 really start the final countdown on unsustainable energy subsidies?

November 8, 2010 | Cees van Beers , André de Moor
For decades there has existed a community of researchers – spanning government ministries, international organisations, academia and civil society – working to increase the world’s understanding and awareness of harmful subsidies. Since September 2009, when the G-20 committed to phase out and rationalize inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies that lead to wasteful consumption and distorted long-term energy investments, much attention has turned to the subject. Marking just over a year after this agreement was reached, and in the run-up to the G-20’s Seoul Summit on 11−12 November, Subsidy Watch contacted Professor Cees van Beers and André de Moor, part of the fossil-fuel subsidy research community since the 1990s, and asked for a retrospective: how far have we come and how far have we yet to go?

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The Public Goods Paradigm and the EU's Common Agricultural Policy

May 17, 2010 | Valentin Zahrnt
From the outside, the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) may look immutable. The only major effect of the reform passed by farm ministers in 2009, dubbed the ‘Health Check', was to dissipate more serious ambitions for change for the rest of the EU long-term budget (2007–2013).

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The Real Reasons Behind India's Reluctance to Liberalize Petroleum Prices

May 17, 2010 | Bhamy V Shenoy
In just four years the Indian government has had three high-level committees recommend how petroleum product prices should be determined. All three have shared the same general conclusions: the government should reform fuel-price subsidies and use other, more effective policies to improve the welfare of the poor. But the reality behind India's reluctance to liberalize prices is not a lack of good policy advice.

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Blog: A storm brews over UK offshore wind subsidies

February 8, 2010
On 8 January, the Crown Estate, the body which manages Britain's sovereign lands, announced the names of the companies who have successfully bid for the right to build giant offshore wind farms in nine zones established around the UK.

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The Tough Politics of Energy Subsidy

October 10, 2009 | David G. Victor
Governments spend staggering sums of money subsidizing energy—in particular fossil fuels, but increasingly also other forms of energy such as renewables.  The latest global assessment, published last year by the International Energy Agency, puts the total energy subsidy at far more than US$300 billion annually.

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