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Fossil Fuel Subsidies & Health

On a global scale, the removal of consumer fossil fuel subsidies combined with effective taxation would have positive health impacts. Impacts and timing of subsidies allocated to coal are also important in terms of encouraging overuse with knock-on health effects. Broader externalities from fossil fuels have wide ramifications for human health.

Blog: Change Makers Leap Forward as Momentum for Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform Grows

There is a pressing “need for faster reform, urgency and political commitment.”[1] These were the opening highlights of the fifth high-level event on fossil fuel subsidy reform, organized by the Friends of Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform (“Friends”), Global Subsidies Initiative and the World Bank on April 21, in the context of the 2017 International Monetary Fund and World Bank Spring Meetings held in Washington, D.C.

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A Low-Hanging Fruit for Financing and Implementing SDGs: End Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Phase-out and reallocation of fossil fuel subsidies (FFS) is a low-hanging fruit for financing and implementing SDGs. First, it has a diverse support base of both sustainable development advocates and “government downsizers.” Second, instead of requiring financing like many sustainable development policies, it could free up hundreds of billions of dollars for implementing multiple SDGs.

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A Solar Journey: Reaching the remotest villages

​The absence of a road initiated a journey to a remote village located in a forest in Odisha, India. The village, Sarda Gram Panchayat, is actually a cluster of five villages and is located in a dense forest near the Sambalpur District of Odisha. The remoteness of the villages has severed ties to development work—energy access, education, health facilities and other services all have hit a roadblock.

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