G20 Poured More Than $1T Into Fossil Fuel Subsidies Despite Cop26 Pledges - Report (theguardian.com) 74
The G20 poured record levels of public money into fossil fuels last year despite having promised to reduce some of it, a report has found. The Guardian: The amount of public money flowing into coal, oil and gas in 20 of the world's biggest economies reached a record $1.4tn in 2022, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) thinktank, even though world leaders agreed to phase out âoeinefficientâ fossil fuel subsidies at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow two years ago. The report comes ahead of a meeting of G20 countries in Delhi next month that could set the tone for the next big climate conference, which takes place in the United Arab Emirates in November.
It is crucial that leaders put fossil fuel subsidies on the agenda, said Tara Laan, a senior associate with the IISD and lead author of the study. "These figures are a stark reminder of the massive amounts of public money G20 governments continue to pour into fossil fuels -- despite the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change." Fossil fuels release pollutants when burned that heat the planet and make extreme weather more violent. They also dirty the air with toxins that damage people's lungs and other organs. Scientists estimate the air pollution from fossil fuels kills between 1 and 10 million people each year. But beyond the overlooked costs to society, governments have lowered prices further by supporting fossil fuel producers and their customers with public money. The report found G20 governments last year provided fossil fuels $1tn in subsidies, $322bn in investments by state-owned enterprises and $50bn in loans from public finance institutions.
It is crucial that leaders put fossil fuel subsidies on the agenda, said Tara Laan, a senior associate with the IISD and lead author of the study. "These figures are a stark reminder of the massive amounts of public money G20 governments continue to pour into fossil fuels -- despite the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change." Fossil fuels release pollutants when burned that heat the planet and make extreme weather more violent. They also dirty the air with toxins that damage people's lungs and other organs. Scientists estimate the air pollution from fossil fuels kills between 1 and 10 million people each year. But beyond the overlooked costs to society, governments have lowered prices further by supporting fossil fuel producers and their customers with public money. The report found G20 governments last year provided fossil fuels $1tn in subsidies, $322bn in investments by state-owned enterprises and $50bn in loans from public finance institutions.
Germany (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Where do you live that you breathe dirty air every day? Were I you, I'd move.
Re: (Score:3)
Wow. Really I don't think the comparison of fine 1980's cheap ass USSR Chernobyl tech is even relevant.
"Nuke plants either have melted down, or will melt down" Serious? Or will melt down. It can happen so it will happen. Hard to argue with that logic.
Scare tactics are what sets back alot of real research into nuclear fission power. There are a number of new and innovative ideas, but for in the US we have turned on 1ea nuclear reactor in the last like 40+ years. (can't remember off the top of my head,
Re: (Score:2)
The anti-nuke people act like coal doesn't poison us NOW yet are sure nuclear will poison us SOME DAY! It's just exhausting.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a false dichotomy. Most anti-nuclear people are also anti-coal.
Re: Germany (Score:5, Informative)
It would take many coolant pumps to fall for an extended period of time.
Nuclear power plants produce significantly more energy than it takes to make them. They have a much better energy out to energy in ratio than things like solar.
Nuclear power is the second safest energy source we have, grid scale solar is the only thing with a lower casualty rate per TWh of energy. If you include the storage required for that solar, the nuclear ends up safer.
Countries in the north like Germany need like 9 to 12 watts of solar nameplate capacity for every 1 watt of nuclear. That's why only a few years ago their ~8 gigawatts was producing about a third more electricity than their ~65 gigawatts of solar.
https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think it matters how much it takes to fail (Score:2)
Again this isn't a technical problem it's a social one. Is why you're trying to sidestep the problem instead of addressing it head-on. What are you going to do when there's a total breakdown in required m
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the solution to those is obviously nationalization. Which has other benefits as well. Private corporations are inherently limited as they can only do things that directly turn a profit. Public corporations can do things like run at a deficit permanently to provide a good that indirectly profits society. Things like mass transit and most utilities run better nationalized.
For the record, I'm anti-nuke.
Re:Germany (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps it is because nuclear never gets back the energy it takes to build a nuke plant in the first place
Err... no. I think what you're talking about is that nuclear power plants never make back the *money* you put into them -- not if you count the financing costs. It was the discount rate on future earnings that killed the nuclear industry, not dirty hippies carrying protest signs. France did their crash nuclear program when they had nationalized electricty generation; it was a national security response to the Arab oil embargo that was never expected to turn a profit.
As for thorium, it solves an entirely different problem than you think it does. If we *were* to replace *all* our fossil fuels with nuclear overnight, we'd run through our known uranium reserves in a decade or two. The advantage of the thorium fuel cycle is that we'd be able to power those reactors for centuries, although those reactors still would likely lose money. But we *know* the thorium fuel cycle works from an engineering standpoint. Canada's CANDU reactors can breed fissile fuel from thorium, and there's about 30 of those in operation.
Re: (Score:3)
France did their crash nuclear program when they had nationalized electricty generation; it was a national security response to the Arab oil embargo that was never expected to turn a profit.
It actually did turn a profit though. I did that calculation a few months ago, and the Messmer plan (that's how they called the plan to build their nuclear plants fleet) cost ~13bn in francs (it was not euro back then) [www.ina.fr] for 13 plants. Adjusted to inflation and to euro, that would be ~17bn current euros. How could that be so "cheap", you might ask? State-owned, and low interest rates back then.
Most of the costs of nuclear plants built today come from the financing. For a 20bn nuclear plant, you are basically
Re: (Score:2)
One of the reasons they're such a large exporter of energy is they essentially have to be. Nuclear plants can't spool up or down in production very quickly and are thus inflexible to demand. This means that when demand drops overnight, they have to dump that energy onto neighboring countries or risk damaging the grid. This is also why France's grid can't be 100% nuclear. If you ignore the ability to dump power off-grid, an all nuclear grid would require about as much grid storage as all renewable.
Re: (Score:2)
One of the reasons they're such a large exporter of energy is they essentially have to be. Nuclear plants can't spool up or down in production very quickly and are thus inflexible to demand.
You are wrong though, or ill-informed. France nuclear fleet is used in load following mode [world-nuclear.org] (scroll down to the "Load-following with PWR nuclear plants" section). This is the reason why France nuclear plants capacitiy factor is ~70%, whereas nuclear in the rest of the world is more around 90%: they spool up and down to follow predicted demand. And on top of that, France mainly uses hydro to cover its peaking needs.
The reason they export so much electricity overnight, instead of spooling down their nuclear pl
Re: (Score:2)
The article you linked quite clearly states that only freshly fueled reactors are really used in load-following and even then can only do so over periods of 30 minutes or so. They can't be used to rapidly spool up or down demand. When they undershoot production, France spools up hydro or they buy from German gas peaker plants. When they overshoot, the more destructive state for the grid, they dump the excess into the Italian or UK markets mostly. While the nuclear fleet has some amount of load-following in
Re: (Score:2)
The article you linked quite clearly states that only freshly fueled reactors are really used in load-following
Please read the article again.
Up until they 65% into the fuel cycle, they play a full part. From 65% to 90%, they play a smaller part. At the end of the fuel cycle, after 90%, they are ran at steady power output.
65% is not freshly fueled reactors. 90% neither.
and even then can only do so over periods of 30 minutes or so. They can't be used to rapidly spool up or down demand.
30 mins is fast, especially when like France they can cover with hydro storage (that they replenish when they overshoot like you say).
While the nuclear fleet has some amount of load-following in total, it is not the major source of flexibility in production.
Nope, you are wrong. Just look at the production charts, or how nuclear plants ramp up/down. I don't know what to tell
Re: (Score:2)
Sodium salt reactors have been around for some time.
Re: (Score:2)
Germany isn't going broke (Score:5, Insightful)
As for nuclear, Germany's afraid of the same thing America is: private companies mismanaging plants like they did in Japan resulting in a massive disaster that causes an entire city to be evacuated for 10+ years.
That's not an easy problem to solve, because it a social & political one, not a technological one. So Nuclear power fans instead pretend the problem doesn't exist.
You need to solve our crazy obsession with neo-liberal / laissez faire politics and our willingness to dismantle necessary regulations before nuclear will be close to safe for anyone outside of the military (where money is no object). But to do that you'd have to let go of all sorts of sacred cows and, well, I don't think you're prepared to do that, much less putting in the leg work to make it happen.
Happy to be proven wrong though. But no pudding until you eat your meat.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I really don't care what he says. The hundreds of thousands of civilians mowed down drown any propaganda he can spew before he says a single word.
War crimes speak for themselves. Even if Ukraine were an aggressor, it wasn't Ukraine who invaded Russia. Look who invaded whom, and kindly take your "Z" sympathies somewhere else.
Re: (Score:1)
The hundreds of thousands of civilians mowed down drown any propaganda he can spew before he says a single word.
Nine thousand. Not ten thousand (yet), let alone hundreds of thousands. It is a horrible number, but a correct number is better than looking like someone who doesn't know what they are even talking about.
Re: (Score:3)
So Nuclear power fans instead pretend the problem doesn't exist.
You should stop talking for others. You have enough trouble making your own points clear.
Nuclear power proponents (it's not about fans) usually just say that the risks associated with nuclear are far less important than the risks associated with keeping burning fossil fuels. The fact that you can't see CO2, and that it is diluted in the atmosphere, does not make it less dangerous because of its impacts on climate change.
You should also realize that anti-nuclear people have been saying that nuclear is unsafe
The risks for who? (Score:1)
Fukushima evacuated a city. That can affect me. Hell, that can and would ruin me. I'd lose everything. In America. A country that does *not* take care of people.
Homelessness in America is terrifying. There's not a lot here on
Re: (Score:2)
So you're saying I should take the risk because of climate change.
You fail to see my point. What I was saying is that Fukushima happened because there was a fucking magnitude 9.1 earthquake happening, followed by a gigantic tsunami with waves over 30 meters tall at the epicenter, and 15 meters high when it reached the coast.
If you had a house there, the Tsunami destroyed it. If you had a business there, same. 15000 people actually died of that Tsunami. Hundreds of thousands more lost their house and everything they had. But you are focusing on Fukushima, which resulted i
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not going to risk losing everything I have in the count
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not going to risk losing everything I have
That's what you are doing already by opposing nuclear. Because the consequence of not doing it, or of slowing it down, is increasing climate change and its effects, which will impact you. Directly or indirectly, I am not going to expand on that, you seem smart enough to understand how political instabilities even hundreds of miles away can end up impacting you.
I am open to solutions to the corrupt businessman problem
Just to clarify, I am not dodging your questions or problems, but it's hard to understand what your issue is. Apparently, it seems to be corrupt busi
Re: (Score:3)
Nuclear in the military isn't safe. In fact, it's quite a bit less safe than civilian production. But the military has the ability to label any accident as Top Secret and jail anyone who tries to talk about it.
Re: (Score:2)
First, baseload is only around 20% of electricity demand. Second, nuclear maxes out at ~70-75% of the grid because it can't spool up or down very quickly to meet the daily fluctuations in demand. Pure nuclear would require about as much grid storage as pure renewable. Third, nuclear is the most expensive form of electricity generation we have. Even in France. Fourth, there's massive proliferation risks to it; even thorium. Fifth, there's no solution for the waste stream. Burying something underground isn't
Fossil fuels only keep the lights and heat on (Score:1, Interesting)
Nothing too important there.
I'll believe it's an emergency when John Kerry and Jeff Bezos give up their Yachts, private jets and multitude of homes.
Re: (Score:2)
Neither of them are scientists and neither are qualified to know what a crisis looks like.
Subsidized death (Score:3)
That's $1.4tn tax money for a preliminary 1-10million death. While for those living, food and other prices go up because of unpredictable, err, disappointing yields.
There must be better ways, no? UAE will give all the representatives a very warm welcome, no doubt, in the utopia the G20 has paid for by their fossile fuel funding.
Meanwhile, our taxes are indirectly funding https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/... [hrw.org]
Not what anyone ordered.
Re: (Score:2)
That's $1.4tn tax money for a preliminary 1-10million death.
Actually it's not. One of the it's $1.4tn in tax money to prevent death. A large part of what TFA is about is *consumer* subsidies, you know, making sure your constituents don't freeze to death because they can't afford their gas bill thanks to Putin waging a resource war on Europe.
Only going to get larger (?) (Score:2)
I get it, fossil fuels are bad.
You know what else is bad? Russia rolling right through your country because you don't have any fuel for your war machines.
I would hazard to guess that part of this is used as incentives for local producers so that your reliance on foreign sources is as limited as possible - particularly for all of your military stuff. If that is true, then subsidies will only rise as public demand drops and those businesses become unprofitable or until there is an alternative (plus ~20 years
Define ... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It's the fiver you slip your mate when he can't afford a pint.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Something to do with the fact that I pay a fixed price for gas regardless of the higher price my gas company charges me, or how the petrol price dropped by 40c in one day on a day the government decided it will.
We're talking about consumer subsidy here. This isn't some abstract concept, this is direct money funnelled directly into price controls and industry construction programs, in this case the big spike up being driven by European investment in getting the fuck away from Russian gas ... or rather the la
G20 (Score:2)
Does the G20 still include Russia? Or did they get kicked out because they invaded Ukraine.
Look at the Graph. (Score:5, Interesting)
Subsidies bumped up a bit in 2012/2013, and have been declining since. Then BAM! They hit the level the article is concerned with in 2022. Guess what else happened in 2022? Governments needed to completely retool European gas supplies in very short order, and handle markets that had gone crasy.
That spike is not a trend. It's an outlier. Let's see what 2023 looks like.
Re: (Score:3)
Let's see what 2023 looks like.
It'll look just as bad. Still an outlier not a trend, but on the supply side a large number of gas projects didn't get sanctioned until late last year and the subsidies will only be accounted for this year, and on the consumer side many countries kept their consumer subsidies in place until recently, or still have them in place. E.g. The Netherlands is subsidising gas costs until the end of this year. Germany only enacted a price cap in March this year, so there's $200bn earmarked to be spent this year as w
Re: (Score:2)
people whine and bleat about the new, still being developed renewables getting subsidies to encourage new development and investments but never bleat about fossil getting handouts of some form
Re: (Score:2)
Subsidies aren't about fossil fuel companies, they are about driving national policy. Fossil fuel companies exist to make money, they don't give a fuck if your grandma can't afford her gas bill. Fossil fuel companies choose projects on a pick list based on risk and profitability. They don't give a fuck if Germany needs an LNG import terminal today, they a waging operating that terminal for 20 years against building a new drilling platform and how much money that will generate for 20 years.
Subsidies exist to
Re: (Score:2)
They've had plenty (1968) of time to get to grips with global warming and could be using 100% renewables and nuclear by now for energy. So I don't consider Russia to be an excuse here.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not an excuse. I'm just pointing out why the graph says that the subsidy rise is an outlier and not a trend. The trend is that subsidies are going down.
This is sad for more reasons than just climate (Score:2, Insightful)
It's sad that one of the largest, most profitable long established industries owns so many politicians in so many places that they can keep doing this.
Petro chemical industry doesn't need any subsidies, they will make money and produce with our without any assistance.
When ideology and reality collide (Score:3)
Reality always beats ideology eventually.
I call bullshit on $1 trillion (Score:1, Troll)
Articles like this throw out numbers ranging from 1 trillion to 5 trillion all the time. It's nonsense.
The only way they get to these numbers is by calling all kinds of things subsidies.
I bet they pulled some bogus "carbon cost" out of their asses and included it as a subsidy.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Errr no. These are actually direct subsidies offsetting the rising cost of gas budgeted for the singular purpose of subsidising. Out of the $1tn, Germany alone will contribute to 200bn over 2 years. Actual budgeted money earmarked for the purpose of subsidising consumer gas prices.
I know big numbers scare you, but $1tn isn't much when it comes to global expenditure.
Re:I call bullshit on $1 trillion (Score:4, Insightful)
Errr no. These are actually direct subsidies offsetting the rising cost of gas budgeted for the singular purpose of subsidising. Out of the $1tn, Germany alone will contribute to 200bn over 2 years. Actual budgeted money earmarked for the purpose of subsidising consumer gas prices.
I know big numbers scare you, but $1tn isn't much when it comes to global expenditure.
Chase the posted link and see if you can find a report that specifically breaks these numbers down. Best I could find is this, from the IEA which is a sustainability advocacy group: https://www.iea.org/reports/fo... [iea.org]
And in the footnotes it says this:
In order to calculate subsidy levels, there are three typical methods (Sovacool, 2017; Koplow, 2018), including:
- Program-specific estimation is an inventory approach used to identify and quantify the sources of energy subsidies
- A price-gap analysis – an approach that tries to identify the gap by comparing reference prices with end user prices for consumers; this is the approach used in this commentary:
By combining the aforementioned two methods, total support estimates aim to determine the total consumer and producer support levels. This is the approach used in the joint OECD/IEA work.
In other words, they are guessing
Re: (Score:1)
The International Energy Agency, founded by OECD nations in response to the 1973-1974 oil embargo and crisis to ensure the security of oil supplies, and which has published the "Oil Market Report" monthly for the last 40 years... is a "sustainability advocacy group?" That's the best laugh I've had in a while.
It was only in 2015 that IEA's bailiwick was broadened to include non-oil energy security and focus more on efficiency and clean energy tech -- probably out of fear that IRENA, the International Renewa
Re: (Score:2)
In other words, they are guessing
No, they are estimating. A guess is something you do without any further information about an expected outcome. When you have a wealth of knowledge of government subsidy programs impacting the price, know how prices changed before and after they came into effect, know what the market value is compared to the consumer value, that is an estimation not a guess, and a really damn accurate one.
And again you can check their answers by tallying up the subsidies provided in the legislative processes of G20 nations.
Re: (Score:2)
It would be nice to see some details. It is like health statistics that vary wildly with things like "Even if they died 30 yrs later of a lung disease and we can't prove a direct connection we still included them in X."
Look at the list of nations (Score:3)
Australia is heavily dependent on coal and coal sales to China, China still depends heavily on coal along with India. The KSA is of course nothing but oil production.
LIHEAP (Score:2)
Notice the second graph with the huge jump in 2022 labeled "Consumer fossil fuel studies...".
Consumer subsidies generally fall into the category of giving consumers money to buy fossil fuels. At least in the United States, one of the largest such subsidies is the LIHEAP [hhs.gov] program: the "Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program."
In general we count anything which "encourages" the purchase of fossil fuels as a 'subsidy,' but by doing that, we implicitly suggest that we should be allowing a lot of poorer people
Re: (Score:1)
I don't think the state/local authorities that actually implement LIHEAP (using grants from the feds) are required to only spend money on fossil fuels for heating -- they also do cooling some places, and from the LIHEAP web site it looks like they can also get involved with things like energy efficiency, insulation, etc. After all, you don't want to burn a bunch of fuel in a house where all the heat's just going to escape anyway.
But we might also implicitly ask whether -- if not suggest that -- some of the
Double talk (Score:3)
They treat taxes (state or national) as a cost in their study. And then they bump the baseline up by that amount, pretending that it's part of the market price. So, anyone _NOT_ charging the tax is in effect subsidizing fossil fuel (not selling at the manipulated price).
How about: fuel taxes are a negative subsidy. The baseline 'fair price' is that which the markets determine with no government involvement. Paying people to use fuel (compensating them for part of the purchase price) at any point in a national or regional market is a subsidy. Charging them to use it is a negative subsidy. Now, re-plot your graphs.
Gee, what happened last year? (Score:2)
Oh I know: the cheap oil and gas got shut off and people remembered what it's like when decarbinization comes at the point of an AK.
Re: (Score:3)
Their fault for not switching to alternatives like nuclear.
Oh dear... (Score:3)
Just Why ? (Score:3)
believe! (Score:3)
Do not believe anything you read in the Guardian, essentially what used to be known as a "communist rag." What are they counting as "fossil fuel subsidies"? Maybe building roads for cars? Maybe tax credits for R&D? Maybe "overly cheap" leases on public lands?