The IEA is producing two detailed assessments on nuclear energy in the coming months. The first, a chapter in their vaunted World Energy Outlook, will examine in detail the prospects and challenges to nuclear energy going forward. The second, produced jointly with NEA, will update their Technology Roadmap series, examining options and impediments to scaling nuclear around the world.
Complex security, environmental, and economic trade-offs remain the norm for the energy sector. Government intervention is also the norm, and too often involves a torrent of energy plans, white-papers, and legislation. In an ideal world, government policies should work in tandem with market forces to achieve an adequate energy supply mix that is cleaner and more diverse than what preceded it. These synergies do not currently exist. Instead, there are thousands of government energy market interventions in place around the world - many of which act counte
Complex security, environmental, and economic trade-offs remain the norm for the energy sector. Government intervention is also the norm, and too often involves a torrent of energy plans, white-papers, and legislation. In an ideal world, government policies should work in tandem with market forces to achieve an adequate energy supply mix that is cleaner and more diverse than what preceded it. These synergies do not currently exist. Instead, there are thousands of government energy market interventions in place around the world - many of which act counter to sta
Keynote presentation at the Expert Workshop on Subsidies to Fossil Fuels and Climate Mitigation Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), held at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC on January 14, 2014. Slides review recent global estimates of fossil fuel subsidies, highlighting both the tallies and the reasons the estimates differ widely from one another.
This report documents the scale of fossil fuel subsidies and sets out a practical agenda for their elimination in the context of the global goal of tackling climate change. It spells out the real costs of fossil fuel subsidies within the top developed-country emitters (the E11), the G20, and more broadly across developing countries, and outlines ways to achieve their global phase-out by 2025.
Two years after the Fukushima disaster started unfolding on 11 March 2011, its impact on the global nuclear industry has become increasingly visible. Global electricity generation from nuclear plants dropped by a historic 7 percent in 2012, adding to the record drop of 4 percent in 2011. This World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013 (WNISR) provides a global overview of the history, the current status and the trends of nuclear power programs worldwide. It looks at nuclear reactor units in operation and under construction.
Useful overview of ways the existing United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) could be leveraged to expand transparency and reform of fossil fuel subsidies. Because there are a number of potential venues already extant under the UNFCCC that could be used, the chance to overcome political resistence may be higher than through some other venues. The author anticipates that developing countries implementing subsidy reforms as Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions may be particularly promising.
In recent years the manufacturing of renewable-energy technologies has become truly global. The associated rise in international investment and trade in goods and services related to renewable energy has been rapid, but it has not always been smooth. Already there have been challenges at the WTO, and the unilateral imposition of countervailing and anti-dumping duties, in response to some countries' policies on the grounds that they distort trade.
Energy subsidies have wide-ranging economic consequences. While aimed at protecting consumers, subsidies aggravate fiscal imbalances, crowd-out priority public spending, and depress private investment, including in the energy sector. Subsidies also distort resource allocation by encouraging excessive energy consumption, artificially promoting capital-intensive industries, reducing incentives for investment in renewable energy, and accelerating the depletion of natural resources. Most subsidy benefits are captured by higher-income households, reinforcing inequality.
Table summarizing the ways G20 member countries have defined reportable subsidies to fossil fuels, and the gaps these definitions open up to missing entire classes of government support to the fossil fuels sector. The table has been extracted from Phasing Out Fossil-Fuel Subsidies in the G20: A Progress Update.