G20 Energy Ministers meet on the 29th of June in Beijing to discuss the major energy policy challenges facing the group. A key area of discussion is fossil fuel subsidy reform.
For a long time, the international community has talked about the benefits that can be created by removing wasteful fossil-fuel subsidies and freeing up expenditure for more worthwhile things—but little analysis has looked at how this works out in practice.
In large part, this is because so few countries, including among the G-20, have implemented ambitious and successful reforms.
The Government of India launched the Direct Benefit Transfer for LPG (DBTL) scheme to provide LPG subsidies directly into consumers’ bank accounts with the aim of curbing diversion and weeding out duplicate connections.
This study conducted an independent performance evaluation of the modified DBTL scheme, with a focus on assessing the efficacy of the scheme against its stated objectives and its implementation process, as well as the experiences of key stakeholders with the scheme’s implementation and impact. The report unravels the difficulties faced by different stakeholders and puts forward suggestions for reforms. Finally, it provides insights into the lessons learned from the scheme’s implementation. The study surveyed 1,270 households and 92 LPG distributors, interviewed field officers and bank managers, officials at the oil marketing companies and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG).
At the very end of December 2014, Indonesia introduced major reforms to its fossil fuel subsidies, removing subsidies to gasoline (except for distribution costs outside of the central islands of Java, Bali and Madura) and introducing a “fixed” subsidy of IDR 1,000 per litre for diesel.
This study investigates two central questions: Where were these savings reallocated?
This study examines the role that policy crediting might play in increasing the mitigation impact of energy pricing reform and carbon pricing policies (pricing reform).
It is well understood that increasing fuel product prices can be a shock for low-income households, requiring careful mitigation strategies to ensure that subsidy reform does not harm the most vulnerable.
For the past 60 years kerosene in India has primarily been available as a subsidized commodity for households as an affordable cooking and illumination (lighting) fuel.
The report finds that subsidizing kerosene fails to meet the objective of providing affordable cooking and lighting service to households. There is a clear case for alternatives to replace kerosene for its end services that could include any of the following: off-grid lighting, clean cooking provision or a direct benefit transfer for kerosene (DBT-K).
India has the world’s largest concentration of population using biomass with inefficient stoves—about 840 million people in India rely fully or partially on traditional biomass for cooking.
This report explores the issues and challenges of clean cooking in urban India through a case study of the Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation in Uttar Pradesh. The report analyzes results from a survey of 250 households in Ghaziabad district which yielded statistics and insights on clean cooking coverage and accessibility, energy usage and prices and how gender is an important determinant of cleaner cooking fuels.
