Fossil fuel producers receive $62 billion in "indirect subsidies" per year, a new study finds. But the cost of providing those subsidies is far, far greater.
After experiencing firsthand the infamous Texas Winter Storm in February and listening to the then-chair of ERCOT describe the disaster as 'our renewables let us down' ... I have thoughts. Behind the incredible deceit and fraud of OG toward their clients (oil & gas; is that the right abbreviation?) are businesses run much like those of our ex-president: poorly managed and failures without heavy financial gov't. [citizen] propping up. These companies knew about climate change and its implications decades ago and had all that time -- grifting and being subsidized along the way -- to re-tool their businesses to achieve success under the actual environmental, social, and political conditions we now confront. They chose overwhelmingly not to do so and now are whining about not-fair and job-losses and so on. I have zero sympathy. I suppose it's not too late for them to figure out how to get in on renewable energy and make their participation profitable as well as morally sound; but I'm not very hopeful they'll change course.
Even these numbers are misleading. There are "direct" subsidies, "indirect" subsidies (which are apparently narrowly defined in terms of things like pricing problems), but then there are also "very indirect" subsidies at a much larger scale, right? Any time you build a road instead of public transit, is this being factored in as a very indirect fossil fuel subsidy? It's not directly measurable, but that's where I've always understood a tremendous amount of subsidization to be occurring.
In the footnotes of the appendix, $48/ton is listed as the current external/social cost of carbon used in the calculations. I think many analysts would say it should be higher ($100, $200), so maybe that $550 billion is low. But the calcs also add other pollution costs, though not methane leakage. I can't quite figure out how the "elasticity" factors are used, but I'm just a simple engineer.
It's interesting to translate varying external costs/ton CO2 into $/gallon or $/therm or $/kWh to see what a consumer might see. It starts to get steep for natural gas; $100/ton would increase most folks heating gas rates by 60%; accounting for associated methane gets to maybe 90%+ total. Though we survived inflation-adjusted gas prices like that in the past, it might not make the average voter happy, at least until their cold-climate HP is delivered.
I would quibble with the allocation of road costs to the underlying gasoline or diesel in the context of fuel switching or replacement to reduce CO2 emissions. Think about the limit. If all vehicles were magically powered by sustainable electricity, we'd still need to pay for road congestion, road damage (up a bit due to battery weight), premature deaths in collisions, pollution from tire dust, etc. with some other fee(s) or via some of the same old subsidies.
Oh well, good to sip a brew and see what our Ivy League economists get published in the National Academy of Sciences. Best get back to something fun like agri-voltaics in Australia. Lots of sheep enjoying shade.
After experiencing firsthand the infamous Texas Winter Storm in February and listening to the then-chair of ERCOT describe the disaster as 'our renewables let us down' ... I have thoughts. Behind the incredible deceit and fraud of OG toward their clients (oil & gas; is that the right abbreviation?) are businesses run much like those of our ex-president: poorly managed and failures without heavy financial gov't. [citizen] propping up. These companies knew about climate change and its implications decades ago and had all that time -- grifting and being subsidized along the way -- to re-tool their businesses to achieve success under the actual environmental, social, and political conditions we now confront. They chose overwhelmingly not to do so and now are whining about not-fair and job-losses and so on. I have zero sympathy. I suppose it's not too late for them to figure out how to get in on renewable energy and make their participation profitable as well as morally sound; but I'm not very hopeful they'll change course.
Even these numbers are misleading. There are "direct" subsidies, "indirect" subsidies (which are apparently narrowly defined in terms of things like pricing problems), but then there are also "very indirect" subsidies at a much larger scale, right? Any time you build a road instead of public transit, is this being factored in as a very indirect fossil fuel subsidy? It's not directly measurable, but that's where I've always understood a tremendous amount of subsidization to be occurring.
In the footnotes of the appendix, $48/ton is listed as the current external/social cost of carbon used in the calculations. I think many analysts would say it should be higher ($100, $200), so maybe that $550 billion is low. But the calcs also add other pollution costs, though not methane leakage. I can't quite figure out how the "elasticity" factors are used, but I'm just a simple engineer.
It's interesting to translate varying external costs/ton CO2 into $/gallon or $/therm or $/kWh to see what a consumer might see. It starts to get steep for natural gas; $100/ton would increase most folks heating gas rates by 60%; accounting for associated methane gets to maybe 90%+ total. Though we survived inflation-adjusted gas prices like that in the past, it might not make the average voter happy, at least until their cold-climate HP is delivered.
I would quibble with the allocation of road costs to the underlying gasoline or diesel in the context of fuel switching or replacement to reduce CO2 emissions. Think about the limit. If all vehicles were magically powered by sustainable electricity, we'd still need to pay for road congestion, road damage (up a bit due to battery weight), premature deaths in collisions, pollution from tire dust, etc. with some other fee(s) or via some of the same old subsidies.
Oh well, good to sip a brew and see what our Ivy League economists get published in the National Academy of Sciences. Best get back to something fun like agri-voltaics in Australia. Lots of sheep enjoying shade.