Energy Subsidies in Other Countries

This September, the International Food and Agriculture Trade Policy Council (IPC) released a report about biofuel subsidies and international trade, Biofuel and Biomass Subsidies in the U.S., EU and Brazil: Towards a Transparent System of Notification.

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.

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.

The European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) has released a report criticizing the European Union's biofuels policy, Green Protectionism in the European Union: How Europe's Biofuels Policy and the Renewable Energy Directive Violate WTO Commitments.

The irony of water scarcity on a planet 70% covered by ocean does make us gaze longingly at the seas as the ultimate answer. The public, politicians and water authorities continue to hope that cost-effective and environmentally friendly desalination - the removal of salt from seawater to make it drinkable - will come to the rescue of water-scarce regions.