The United Nations goes after fossil fuels in a new report.
Bloomberg reports,
Fossil-fuel consumers worldwide received about six times more state subsidies last year than were given to the renewable-energy industry, according to the chief adviser to oil-importing nations.
Aid to cut the price of gasoline, gas and coal rose by more than a third to $409 billion as global energy prices increased, compared with $66 billion of support for biofuels, wind power and solar energy, the Paris-based International Energy Agency said today in its World Energy Outlook.
What Bloomberg neglects to mention is that fossil fuels also supply 40-50 times more of the world’s energy.
Wind and solar receive 55 and 97 times more in subsidies than coal and natural gas, respectively.
We’re not for subsidies. That said, the renewable industry’s whining about fossil fuel subsidies is a red herring.
Were no energy subsidies provided, energy economics are such that we would still be using fossil fuels and renewables would still be a pipedream.
If you apply the reasoning of these fools, similar to Paul Krugman’s claim of subsidies to fossil fuels in Nov. 6 article in the NYT, the government is giving all of us a subsidy for being alive. We exhaust carbon dioxide from breathing and I have no idea how to evalualte the emissions from other human cavities.
Data from U. S. EIA released last summer for the year 2010 showed subsidies for solar were more than 1000 times subsidies for solar and about 100 times greater for wind.
Bloomberg’s statement is about the entire world. There are many places in the world where gasoline, diesel, and kerosene are sold at subsidized prices. I believe that places like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela sell gasoline for less than US$1/gal.
Of course, what those hell holes do is not relevant to US public policy. Here in the US, ethanol, wind, and solar are the big hogs at the trough.
…cruise the web .. check the amount our gvmt makes from fossil fuels in taxes .. you’ll find that our gvmt gets more in taxes on a gallon of gasoline than our oil companies make as profit .. our gvmt pisses away waaaay too much money
i suggest that there be NO more subsidies on anything .. no more new taxes .. the gvmt needs show responsibility for what they take from us now before they try to take more…