Renewable Energy Subsidies & Fossil Fuel Phase-Out

In the past two months, Japan has accused Canadian province Ontario of breaking WTO rules in its support for renewable energy; and the United States has launched an investigation into Chinese support for green industries more generally. Find out why in the WTO Subsidy Dispute Round-up.

In March 2007, European Union members agreed that 20% of energy needs will be sourced from renewable energy by 2020. Many EU governments reacted by pouring billions of euros in subsidies into their wind- and solar-energy industries.

Following announcements that fossil-fuel subsidies will be phased out, from the G-20, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and a number of independent countries, including Iran, Nigeria and Bahrain, Subsidy Watch has decided each month to highlight important news stories that touch on this theme.

On 29 July, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a Bloomberg-owned consultancy, put out a press release summarizing the preliminary results of a study comparing subsidies to ‘clean’ and to ‘dirty’ energy sources, namely renewable energy and fossil energy.

At an impressive 834 pages, Renewable Energy Government Incentive Programs, released in February by Energy Business Reports (EBR), offers an in-depth look at the United States’ many programs supporting renewable energy.

Following announcements that fossil-fuel subsidies will be phased out, from the G-20, the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and a number of independent countries, including Iran, Nigeria and Bahrain, Subsidy Watchhas decided each month to highlight important news stories that touch on this theme.

The United States' Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently acknowledged that, despite generous levels of taxpayer funding, cellulosic ethanol was not scaling up as quickly as they had hoped. So they reduced the 2010 cellulosic ethanol mandate from 100 million gallons to 6.5 million gallons.