IMF Working Paper WP/15/105 (can find and download for free) How Large Are Global Energy Subsidies? The authors say $5 Trillions per year. Mostly outside of “Advanced Economies” including USA (if that matters). No doubt some will find the number overinflated, but large or small, the energy industry has Market Distortions. If this report is wrong, perhaps some one could suggest how to do the task better. The first issue would seem to be 'post-tax', which looks like 'externalities' which have previously been monetized at very different levels. Pre-tax however is found to be 500 Billions, which is not chump change.
iea says its an order of magnitude lower IEA - Energy Subsidies imf must be including some strange estimates as "energy subsidies". Perhaps they are including weapons systems as part of energy subsidies.
They agree about pre-tax, roughly. I'm sure there have been much lower estimates. American Petroleum Institute?
API probably gets less subsidies then most countries. I hate the subsidies, I hate the policies, but we should not pretend that they are all that high in the US. Direct subsidies for all fossil fuels are only $37.5B, given how much we use. Fossil Fuel Subsidies: Overview - Oil Change InternationalOil Change International Problems even according to Hansen are that most of the tax plans, plan on spending the money. The US consumed about 7 Billion barrels of oil and produced about 1 Billion tons of coal. That less than $5/ (bbl or short ton) in subsidies, and if you listen to democrats they like lots of these subsidies too. Say you taxed each barrel of oil $40 and each short ton of coal $50, according to forbes we may change behavior. Remove the grandfathering of coal plants and lessen restrictions on new ones along with this coal tax, and the worst coal plants will get mothballed fast. Gasoline switching is slower, as the fleet turn over is less than 10% per year. If consumption drops 20$ then it will still raise over $200B more than subsidies. I'd use most of that money to reduce the payroll tax, and to increase social security but it needs to be means tested for the gas money back.The tax and cap plan transferred the wealth to the big coal utilities, and likely would have decreased ghg less than the epa's actions have.
