October 24, 2019
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Franziska Funke
,
Laura Merrill
There’s no question that abandoning fossil fuel subsidies will benefit the economy and the planet, but as protests in Ecuador show, reforms require careful design and considerate execution in order to look after the vulnerable and get citizens on board.
Thousands of people, youth especially, were calling for Indonesia and countries around the world to live up to their commitments on climate change. Students were coming together to demonstrate that they were no longer willing to simply go along with what their leaders were proposing. How can the government answer their calls?
Imagine driving into a gas station to fill up your car’s gas tank and seeing this stark notice affixed to the pump: “Warning: Burning fossil fuels kills.”
September 2019 marked ten years since the Group of 20 (G20) committed to “Rationalize and phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption” as part of the Pittsburgh Summit in 2009. Very little has changed since then...
Energy challenges are similar across the world. Fortunately, so are the solutions. In many cases, subsidy reform and energy efficiency are closely linked and mutually supportive.
Our oceans and fish stocks—and the populations that depend on them—all suffer from the consequences of overfishing. The time has come for concrete actions.
Between 2015 and 2018, 50 countries undertook some level of fossil fuel subsidy reform. However, the International Energy Agency (IEA) found that consumer subsidies increased slightly in 2017.
Energy transitions are about people: the ones who make the decisions and the ones affected by those decisions. A ‘Just Transition’ approach ensures the affected people are considered by those making decisions.
Workers at the Hendrina coal power station in Mpumalanga, South Africa, are unsure if they will soon be joining the former workers at the nearby Optimum coal plant, protesting outside a shuttered plant.
Millions of dollars worth of fossil fuel subsidies could be better targeted by governments to benefit poor women including energy subsidies and policies.
January 15, 2019
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Laura Merrill
,
Lourdes Sanchez
,
with additional reporting from Molly Bruce
Many countries are leading the way and along with the private sector: several organizations shared stories and actions for success at the recent United Nations climate change talks in Katowice, Poland.
The yellow vest protesters have taken over the streets of France in late November and early December, for many, this raises questions of who they are and what they are protesting.
The scale of the mining industry in Zambia is by far the largest consumer of electricity, with over half of Zambia’s electricity being consumed in the country’s mining sector.
September 11, 2018
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Jakob Skovgaard
,
Harro Van Asselt
Despite growing agreement on the negative impact of fossil fuel subsidies on the climate and socioeconomic issues, subsidies continue to be handed out by governments around the world. To understand this implementation gap, we must learn more about the political factors favoring and blocking fossil fuel subsidy reform. Our research shows that a more holistic framing of fossil fuel subsidy reform that goes beyond environmental concerns could help garnering broader societal support.
In 2015, nearly 780 million people, or more than 60 per cent of the Indian population, did not have access to clean cooking. Like many countries, the Government of India has attempted to address this by subsidizing liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
On behalf of IISD’s Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI), I presented at the panel discussion on Addressing the Challenges for the Global Energy Transition towards Climate Compatible Future on August 7 at the Civil 20 (C20) Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The summit’s objective was to facilitate an exchange among civil society representatives from G20 and other countries on the G20 agenda.
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 calls upon the global community to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030. The High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) in New York noted progress, but also established that the world is still not on track to reach the targets on energy access, energy efficiency and renewable energies.
