Webinar slides prepared for the Vote Solar Initiative to provide an overview of fossil fuel subsidies. The presentation discusses the informational gaps that often plague numbers on fossil fuel subsidies reported in the press, and provides a number of frameworks and tools to help Vote Solar members to more comprehensively assess that subsidies that competing projects may be receiving.
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.
In this, our second review of progress in meeting this phase out commitment (an earlier review was published in November 2010), we reviewed formal submittals by member countries to the G20 and the WTO, reached out individually to staff from each member country, and reviewed third-party assessments of fossil fuel subsidies. We conclude that the G20 effort is currently failing. The following factors are the key reasons for this failure.
For the past decade imports of tar sands crude oil or bitumen have been increasing. Tar sands is stripmined and drilled in an energy‐and water‐intensive process from under the Boreal forests and wetlands of Alberta. In the process, Canada is destroying critical habitat while releasing three times the greenhouse gas emissions as conventional oil production.
The ability to issue tax-exempt Gulf Opportunity Zone bonds ended in 2011.
The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline project, like all oil industry projects, benefits from substantial taxpayer subsidies. Some, like reduced property taxes, are directed at the pipeline itself. Others increase the viability of the pipeline by reducing the cost of the oil going into it, or the cost of processing it at the other end.
Despite surging prices for energy and other commodities, the vast majority of materials generated in the United States continues to be thrown away in landfills or burned in incinerators. This Webinar, prepared for the Product Stewardship Institute in Boston, provides an overview of the importance of increased recycling and the role of subsidies to primary materials and disposal in slowing the expansion of materials recycling and reuse. It contains a number of examples of subsidies of concern, but is not intended as a comprehensive listing.
Earth Track presentation at the Biofuels Policy Forum briefing on April 14, 2011 in Washington, DC. The document provides an overview of the historical and projected level of subsidization to biofuels, and why this policy is not an efficient way to address concerns over greenhouse gas emissions or energy security.
Earth Track's submitted comments on the National Academy of Sciences' upcoming analysis on the effects of the federal tax code on greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions. The comments cover a variety of issues on subsidy valuation and presentation that have arisen during more than twenty years of work in this area. Issues addressed include subsidy valuation, econometric modeling of subsidy reform, what types of tax policies warrant consideration, and which sectors of the economy should be included. In each area, recommended approaches are provided.