{"id":6329,"date":"2015-05-22T06:08:48","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T06:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6329"},"modified":"2015-05-22T06:08:48","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T06:08:48","slug":"global-energy-subsidies-a-long-road-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/05\/22\/global-energy-subsidies-a-long-road-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Global energy subsidies \u2013 a long road back"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An IMF <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imf.org\/external\/pubs\/ft\/wp\/2015\/wp15105.pdf\">working paper<\/a>,\u00a0<em>How Large Are Global Energy Subsidies<\/em>?, paints\u00a0a picture of energy subsidies at global and regional levels by focusing on post-tax subsidies. \u00a0These\u00a0arise when consumer prices are below supply costs plus a tax to reflect environmental damage and an additional tax applied to all consumption goods to raise government revenues. \u00a0The paper says that such post-tax energy subsidies are much\u00a0higher than previously estimated and are projected to remain high.<\/p>\n<p>A\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2015\/may\/18\/fossil-fuel-companies-getting-10m-a-minute-in-subsidies-says-imf\">comment<\/a>\u00a0in the Guardian,\u00a0says that fossil fuel companies benefit from global subsidies of $5.3tn a year, because\u00a0polluters are not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. \u00a0These include the harm caused to local populations by air pollution as well as to people across the globe affected by the floods, droughts and storms being driven by climate change. \u00a0China is the most egregious contributor to this problem through its massive use of coal.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst the problem seems clear, what to do about it is less obvious in the sense that what is politically possible seems limited. \u00a0The prize is considerable though. \u00a0As the Guardian notes, \"<em>the need for subsidies for renewable energy \u2013 a relatively tiny $120bn a year \u2013 would also disappear, if fossil fuel prices reflected the full cost of their impacts<\/em>.\"<\/p>\n<p>Thus, in the UK, we might imagine an additional (and hypothecated) tax on all carbon-based fuels with the finance raised going to fund health programmes. \u00a0But who is going to vote for this? \u00a0And which party is going to propose that we do so? \u00a0Before any of that, we need an imaginative and wide-ranging educational programme that helps people understand the issues. \u00a0That doesn't seem politically possible either. \u00a0It looks as if we shall need to proceed one school and community at a time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An IMF working paper,\u00a0How Large Are Global Energy Subsidies?, paints\u00a0a picture of energy subsidies at global and regional levels by focusing on post-tax subsidies. \u00a0These\u00a0arise when consumer prices are below supply costs plus a tax to reflect environmental damage and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}