Cutting Emissions for a Post-Pandemic World: Fossil fuel subsidy reform and carbon pricing

Join us for an IISD Global Subsidies Initiative webinar exploring the role of subsidy reform and carbon pricing in governments' post-pandemic recovery responses. The webinar, part of a series initiated by the Friends of Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform, will take place on Wednesday, May 20, at 8:00 GMT.

In the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis, governments must react to rising budget deficits and the need to stimulate damaged economies. At the same time, they need to make “finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development” as set out in Article 2.1.c of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Fossil fuel subsidy (FFS) reform and carbon pricing—putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions through taxation or carbon markets—can both contribute to an overall signal to the market. This webinar will discuss how carbon pricing and subsidy reform can contribute to post-pandemic recovery stimulus measures.

As part of the webinar, we will present findings of the IISD working paper Cutting Emissions for a Post-Pandemic World: Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform and Carbon Pricing. This study finds that governments continue to simultaneously apply taxes, subsidies, and carbon markets to many sectors of the economy, often for historical, institutional or political reasons. Given their coexistence it is necessary to consider the aggregate effects of these tools and the overall impact of these instruments on financial flows and broader governmental targets. As the world recovers from the COVID-19 crisis and deploys stimulus measures that will shape the economy over the coming decades, understanding these aggregate effects becomes even more crucial. 

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