Renewable Energy Subsidies & Fossil Fuel Phase-Out

BANGLADESH– 27-28 November 2012 – To help share experiences on the successes and challenges with fossil-fuel subsidy reform in Bangladesh, the IISD-GSI, in partnership with the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), held two-days of events in Dhaka. On 27th November a roundtable meeting was held with key government agencies and power sector stakeholders to discuss energy price reform.

The policy brief analyzes the current developments around the emerging U-turns on government support to biofuels internationally.

BRUSSELS – 17 October 2012 – The European Commission released today a legislative proposal that would reduce support to conventional biofuels while creating additional incentives for advanced biofuels.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has released a report Energy Subsidies in the Arab World, reviewing the current state of fossil-fuel subsidies and efforts to reform them in seventeen Arab countries.

In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Bill McKibben, Middlebury College professor and founder of the global climate campaign 350.org, highlights the irrationality of U.S. subsidies to fossil-fuel producers by comparison with a type of support that most people are more familiar with - low-interest college loans and scholarships.

MOSCOW - 20 February 2012 - GSI and WWF-Russia co-organized the ‘first-of-its-kind’ seminar Comparative Analysis of Oil and Gas Producer Subsidies as the a launching pad for a broad debate on the scale and efficiency of various programs of government support for oil and gas producers in Russia. The event, which was held as part of the ‘Oil & Gas Dialogue’ series of workshops hosted by the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as the report itself, received substantial press coverage and attention from the community of Russian oil and gas experts.

The GSI releases two papers reviewing the literature on subsidies to different energy technologies: in a paper on electricity generation, looking at fossil fuels, renewable energy and nuclear power; and in a paper on transport fuel, looking at fossil fuels and biofuels.