Resources

This May, farmsubsidy.org, a non-profit project that monitors farm subsidies in the EU, launched its newest data review of the subsidies granted under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

In February 2011, just weeks before the beginning of Japan’s ongoing nuclear crisis, American-based research group The Union of Concerned Scientist (UCS) released Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable Without Subsidies, a report on subsidies to nuclear power in United States, prepared by Doug Koplow, founder of subsidy consultancy Earth Track.

In February 2011, the GSI launched the report Measuring irrigation subsidies in Andhra Pradesh and Southern India: An application of the GSI Method for quantifying subsidies.

This April, German development agency the GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) is due to publish a series of International Fuel Prices Observatory factsheets, focused on fuel price changes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC).

In a October – December 2010 special issue, The Energy and Resources Institute’s (TERI) Energy Security Insights focused on the role played by fossil-fuel subsidies in India and the isssues that surround their reform.

GIZ – formerly known as GTZ – published a policy brief this January, Fuel Price Reform in Bolivia, outlining the mistakes that were made in Bolivia’s attempts to cut its subsidies over the New Year. The five-page document provides a brief chronology of events, from the surprise announcement of price increases on 26 December to President Evo Morales’ sudden U-turn five days later.

In November 2010, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published the World Energy Outlook 2010, the latest in its annually updated series of projections on energy demand, production, trade and investments, differentiated by fuel and region, until 2035. This edition includes a special focus on fossil-fuel subsidies – assessing the size of consumption subsidies and modelling how their reform would affect energy markets, climate change and government budgets.

The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service recently published a study on biofuel subsidies, Effects of Increased Biofuels on the U.S. Economy in 2022. The report examines how key components of the U.S. economy would be affected by the United States’ Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates that 36 billion gallons of biofuel be blended into transportation fuel by 2022.

The conservative National Taxpayers Union and the liberal Public Interest Research Group have co-published a report outlining spending cuts that could reduce the United States’ debt by US$ 600 billion before 2015, Toward Common Ground: Bridging the Political Divide to Reduce Spending. Of this total, the report finds that US$ 62 billion could be saved by scrapping “wasteful subsidies”, including export subsidies, agricultural subsidies and energy subsidies.

This September, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released the working paper The Unequal Benefits of Fuel Subsidies: A Review of Evidence for Developing Countries, reviewing research on the distributional impact of fuel-subsidy reform on household welfare in twenty developing countries, ranging across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.