Governments across the G20 countries are estimated to be spending $88 billion every year subsidising exploration for fossil fuels. Their exploration subsidies marry bad economics with potentially disastrous consequences for climate change. In effect, governments are propping up the development of oil, gas and coal reserves that cannot be exploited if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change.
Fossil fuel subsidies have allowed energy exporting countries to distribute resource revenue, bolstering legitimacy for governments, many of which are not democratically elected. But subsidy benefits are dwarfed by the harmful consequences of encouraging uneconomic use of energy. Now, with consumption posing a threat to long-term exports, governments face a heightened need to raise prices that have come to be viewed as entitlements.
The Inventory Of Estimated Budgetary Support and Tax Expenditure for Fossil Fuels 2013 collects details on more than 550 fossil fuel support measures in the 34 OECD member countries, including many provided by state and provincial governments. The report also highlights progress made and the benefits identified by a number of OECD countries in reforming support to fossil fuels in recent years. It updates an earlier report released in 2011.
For the first time ever, the OECD has compiled an inventory of over 250 measures that support fossil-fuel production or use in 24 industrialised countries, which together account for 95% of energy supply in OECD countries. Those measures had an overall value of about USD 45-75 billion a year between 2005 and 2010. In absolute terms, nearly half of this amount benefitted petroleum products (i.e.
Discussion of fiscal regimes for oil extraction have traditionally focused on the total charges of all sorts levied on a project (the "total government take"), and whether their level and structure optimised oil production and public revenues. Yet national, or global, policies to meet energy and environmental goals need to maximize benefits across complex energy and economic systems, not just specific projects. This study argues that there is a need to reframe the debate on how fiscal regimes - notably tax and royalties - to fossil-fuel extraction are evaluated. It further
Matthew Saunders and Karen Schneider. Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics. June 2000. Australia is only one case in this international overview of problems with subsidies. AUSTRALIA, CANADA, UNITED STATES, JAPAN, EUROPEAN UNION, FORMER SOVIET UNION, EASTERN EUROPE, CHINA, INDONESIA, KOREA, THAILAND, INDIA, SOUTH AFRICA, MIDDLE EAST, MEXICO, ARGENTINA.