USA

Of note:  analysis contains a detailed summary of credit downgrades associated with the last waves of nuclear reactor construction.

While nuclear power remains a thorny political and policy issue today, the concept of building new facilities has gradually reawakened in recent years, offering a buffer against foreign energy dependence, unpredictable commodity prices, and heavily polluting fuel sources. As a result, several of the largest U.S. power companies in recent years have announced plans to pursue new nuclear generation.

Subsidies to the fishing industry are common worldwide, and it is well accepted that these subsidies contribute to overcapacity in fishing fleets and overexploitation of fisheries resources. To date, however, most of the quantitative estimates of these subsidies reported in the literature have been at either the multicountry or global level. Estimates are rarely based on a detailed accounting of individual subsidy programs, limiting both their accuracy and usefulness for management decisions. The present analysis helps fill this gap with respect to U.S. fisheries subsidies.

Detailed look at the hierarchy of subsidies within the US federal government, using the analogy of Dante's Inferno.  A great summary when the article first appeared in the mid-1990s, and the core issues raised sadly remain as central challenges today. The paper does cite some of my earliest work on energy subsidies, a detailed review of federal subsidies to all forms of energy. The paper and appendices were published by the Alliance to Save Energy, a DC-based NGO in 1993.

"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 billion a year."

"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."

Government involvement in financing large scale energy projects has a checkered past.  Historical forays into loan guarantees for biofuels and syn-fuels have been expensive failures.  Large hydroelectric dams and federally-owned uranium enrichment facilities were built and operated as government-owned entities, though not without substantial subsidies.   Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 initiated a new wave of multi-billion dollar federal loan guarantees to large scale, high risk, privately owned energy infrastructure.

This chapter reviews the major policy developments affecting the fuel-ethanol industry of the United States since the late 1970s, quantifies their value to the industry, and evaluates the efficacy of ethanol subsidization in achieving greenhouse gas reduction goals.  Total support to ethanol is currently substantial ($5.8-7.0 billion in 2006) and set to rise sharply even under existing policy settings.  However, its cost effectiveness is low, especially as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.