In The Media

John M. Broder

When he releases his new budget in two weeks, President Obama will propose doing away with roughly $4 billion a year in subsidies and tax breaks for oil companies, in his third effort to eliminate federal support for an industry that remains hugely profitable.Previous efforts have run up against…

Published: Jan 31, 2011

Economist

LAST time it met, in 2009, the G20 took a stand against a little discussed problem that unites environmentalists and economists: fossil-fuel subsidies. Over the course of the subsequent year, the nations contributed to a list of the “inefficient” subsidies they supported and the things they…

Published: Nov 12, 2010

Amory Lovins

Interesting article by Amory Lovins in The Weekly Standard examining the history and market-related problems associated with nuclear subsidies past and present.  Lovins suggests that the structure of many of the proposed nuclear programs do a poor job aligning incentives and accountability for…

Published: Oct 16, 2010

Diana S. Powers, New York Times

Identifying the real costs of competing energy technologies is complicated by the wide range of subsidies and tax breaks involved. As a result, U.S. taxpayers and utility users could end up spending hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars more than necessary to achieve an ample low-…

Published: Jul 26, 2010

C. Ford Runge

Subsidies for biofuels in the United States have reached levels unimagined when support for an "infant industry" began in the late 1970s. Today, the infant has grown into a strapping behemoth with a powerful sense of entitlement and an insatiable appetite for ethanol's primary feedstock: corn.…

Published: Apr 20, 2010

Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute

One way to correct market failures is tax shifting -- raising taxes on activities that harm the environment so that their prices begin to reflect their true cost and offsetting this with a reduction in income taxes. A complementary way to achieve this goal is subsidy shifting. Each year the…

Published: Apr 13, 2010

Mark Clayton

"President Obama has followed up on his support for 'a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,' laid out Jan. 27 in his State of the Union speech, by proposing to triple public financing for nuclear power..."Budget hawks have a different set of concerns. They oppose government '…

Published: Feb 4, 2010

John M. Broder

When he releases his new budget in two weeks, President Obama will propose doing away with roughly $4 billion a year in subsidies and tax breaks for oil companies, in his third effort to eliminate federal support for an industry that remains hugely profitable.  Previous efforts have run up…

Published: Jan 31, 2010

Aaron Nathans

"The billions of dollars that go into a nuclear power plant could be spent better in other ways, including making homes more energy-efficient, said Doug Koplow, president of Earth Track Incorporated, a Cambridge, Mass.-based consulting firm."

Published: Jul 19, 2009

Keith Johnson

"Environmental groups Earth Track and Friends of the Earth just put out a study quantifying biofuels subsidies through 2022, as the U.S. plans to massively increase production of biofuels. The upshot? The cost to taxpayers would be about $420 billion over that period, or an average of about $28…

Published: May 7, 2009

Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 30 (IPS) – Why do U.S. oil companies — some of the most profitable corporations on the planet — receive 20 to 40 billion dollars a year in subsidies from the U.S. government?And, in a time of skyrocketing oil prices and profits, why did the George W. Bush administration in…

Published: Oct 6, 2008

David Freddoso

Somewhere in Germany, a trucker is thanking you. A biofuel executive is cursing you. You probably don’’t know it, but you paid $1 for each gallon of the Brazilian biodiesel fuel blend the trucker is using. The fuel-maker is upset because your generous contribution is driving down the price at which…

Published: Apr 17, 2008

December 6, 2007.  "Cheap No more: Rising incomes in Asia and ethanol subsidies in America have put an end to a long era of falling food prices," The Economist. Cites data, though unfortunately without attribution:"America's ethanol programme is a product of government subsidies. There…

Published: Dec 6, 2007

Ronald Bailey

...Promoters of the ethanol mandate assert that it would help the United States achieve energy independence and slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases that are driving climate change. Evaluating the scientific and economic claims being made for bioethanol can be vexing, but a few urgent…

Published: Dec 4, 2007

Paul Maidment

Farm subsidies are the ultimate cash crop. Farmers in rich countries get $1 billion per day in government hand-outs. To be fair, that figure rounds up the numbers, counts agribusinesses and small farmers, and defines subsidies broadly to include tariffs, export credits and other supports. But, give…

Published: Nov 15, 2007

Mark Clayton

.."Boosting ethanol production is the political equivalent of motherhood and apple pie these days. Politicians on both sides of the aisle as well as presidential candidates eager to do well in Iowa, the nation's No. 1 ethanol-producing state, are behind the measure, unglamorously named the "…

Published: Nov 14, 2007

Martin Woolf

October 30, 2007.  "Biofuels: a tale of special interests and subsidies," by Martin Woolf, Financial Times.  Discusses a variety of the findings of the Global Subsidy Initiative's reports on biofuels subsidies including the US report done by Earth Track.

Published: Oct 30, 2007

Nature

Nature, Editorial page.  Mentions Earth Track's estimates of subsidies per mt CO2-equivalent, calculated for the IISD:...The common complaints about biofuels — and they seem to become more common by the day — are that they are expensive and ineffective at reducing fossil-fuel consumption, that…

Published: Oct 11, 2007

Steven Mufson

"To ease financial concerns, the nuclear power industry has turned to Congress. Among the biggest reasons for renewed interest in nuclear power are the tax breaks, loan guarantees and other subsidies in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.Those benefits were "the whole reason we started down this path,"…

Published: Oct 8, 2007

Mark Clayton

With this week's application to build a new nuclear plant – the first such filing in nearly 30 years – the industry says the US is on the verge of a nuclear power renaissance.With virtually no greenhouse-gas emissions, reactors are touted as part of the solution to global warming. Over the next 15…

Published: Sep 28, 2007