RIO DE JANEIRO - 21 JUNE 2012 - An Official side-event to the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development on the political barriers to fossil fuel subsidy reform.

A new report published by the Global Subsidies Initiative provides a set of recommended actions for progressing fuel subsidy reform in Indonesia.

In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Bill McKibben, Middleburgy College professor and founder of the global climate campaign 350.org, highlights the irrationality of U.S. subsidies to fossil-fuel producers by comparison with a type of support that most people are more familiar with - low-interest college loans and scholarships.

NEW YORK - 26 March 2012 - The Friends of Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform group and the IISD’s Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) convened a side event to the ongoing Rio negotiations, Fossil-Fuel Subsidy Reform: Building Momentum at Rio and Beyond. Chaired by New Zealand, the event set out to discuss why and how fossil-fuel subsidy reform could be advanced at Rio+20 and in other fora.

MOSCOW - 20 February 2012 - GSI and WWF-Russia co-organized the ‘first-of-its-kind’ seminar ‘Comparative Analysis of Oil and Gas Producer Subsidies’ as the a launching pad for a broad debate on the scale and efficiency of various programs of government support for oil and gas producers in Russia.

The Norwegian government provided 25.5 billion Norwegian kroner (US$4 billion) in subsidies for upstream oil and gas activities in 2009, according to a new report.

The report, published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Global Subsidies Initiative, and authored by Econ Pöyry, provides the first detailed accounting of oil and gas subsidies in Norway.

Meeting report: Following the Money: Fossil-fuel subsidy reform en route from Durban to Rio+20 (PDF - 1.14 MB)

DURBAN - 7 December 2011 - As a side-event at the UNFCCC's 17th Conference of Parties, the GSI and the Friends of Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform convened a high-level discussion The Missing Piece? Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform and Climate Change. The event brought together responsible ministers and other high-level government representatives from Costa Rica, Denmark, Ethiopia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, as well as energy subsidy experts from all over the world. The discussion focused on the current state of global efforts to reform fossil-fuel subsidies and possible pathways going forward, including opportunities for integrating reform with national and international climate-change policies.