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How much in subsidies do fossil fuels receive?ourworldindata.org/how-much-subsidies-fossil-fuels
89 sats \ 5 comments \ @0xbitcoiner 28 Jan econ
Estimates range from less than $1 trillion to $7 trillion. Where do these numbers come from?
If we want to tackle climate change, we need to move away from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources. This transition is a lot easier if these cleaner sources are cheaper than fossil fuels.
However, fossil fuels are often subsidized, reducing the short-term economic incentives to switch.
In this article, I explain the scale of fossil fuel subsidies and where these numbers come from.
Because subsidies can be defined in different ways — production, consumption, explicit, implicit — people can quote very different numbers to this question, ranging from hundreds of billions of US dollars to as much as $7 trillion (ten times as much).

How much does the world give to support fossil fuel production and consumption?

Which countries give the highest subsidies to fossil fuels?

The $7 trillion figure includes the social and environmental costs of fossil fuels

...read more at ourworldindata.org
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23 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined 28 Jan
The vast majority of that $7T figure is make believe.
Don't get me wrong, fossil fuel subsidies shouldn't exist. They just aren't actually $7T.
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36 sats \ 3 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 28 Jan
The explanation seems plausible, but I'm still skeptical. If it's not 7T, then how many are we talking about?
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27 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 28 Jan
The 14% in consumer subsidies should probably count, although it would be nice to know more about what's included there.
The 4% in producer subsidies would only count if they are actually subsidies and not just tax breaks: Not stealing from someone is not the same as gifting them money.
The 5% VAT reduction definitely doesn't count.
And then, to a first approximation, none of that other crap should be counted as a subsidy. Conceptually, it's fine to think about some of that stuff as subsidies (really, externalities), but I have no confidence that those estimates are even within an order of magnitude of being correct.
All in all, I would say the total subsidy is in the ballpark of $1T, which is still a trillion higher than it should be.
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37 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner OP 28 Jan
I get what you're saying, but I also see their point.
When people hear that global subsidies for fossil fuels come to $7 trillion, they might reasonably assume that all of these are, effectively, explicit payments. And, if governments are handing this money to fossil fuels, they could reallocate that pot to something else (such as low-carbon technologies). In theory, they could do this tomorrow, and we could transition to clean energy very quickly.
The problem is that there isn’t a $7 trillion pot sitting there to be reallocated. There are annual payments of $1.2 to $1.5 trillion, given directly to fossil fuel production and consumption, which could be used elsewhere.6 Simply removing these explicit subsidies wouldn’t be enough. To tackle the other $5.7 trillion would require various approaches.
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24 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 28 Jan
It's fine to think through those things, but doing so doesn't require peddling falsehoods.
As with other industries, the proper check on negative externalities is making them liable for those damages to the damaged parties.
There's also an immense irony in bringing up a transition to clean energy, which would require far more subsidies.
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