fossil fuel subsidies Articles
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Post-growth policy instruments
This paper proposes a framework to evaluate post-growth policy instruments which gauges their capacity to lessen the pressure for growth emanating from the labour market and the state’s contradictory legitimisation and accumulation imperatives, whilst increasing societal well-being and reducing the biophysical throughput of the economy. It is argued that the most effective policies to do this ...
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Governments Spend $1.4 Billion Per Day to Destabilize Climate
We distort reality when we omit the health and environmental costs associated with burning fossil fuels from their prices. When governments actually subsidize their use, they take the distortion even further. Worldwide, direct fossil fuel subsidies added up to roughly $500 billion in 2010. Of this, supports on the production side totaled some $100 billion. Supports for consumption exceeded $400 ...
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Obama’s budget good for energy efficiency
President Obama's 2013 budget caused a lot of smiles this week among energy efficiency advocates – even if it is more of a wish list than anything else. Obama calls for about $1.2 billion in spending for energy efficiency. What’s this mean to the energy efficiency industry? Kateri Callahan, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, says that Obama’s budget represents a ...
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What’s undermining energy efficiency?
Exhilaration swept through the energy efficiency industry as city after city, state after state and nation after nation set aggressive energy saving goals over the last several years. But with target dates nearing in certain jurisdictions, a more sober attitude now permeates. Some governmentsare asking: Are we reaching too high? A global reportissued this week by PwC, which looks into the minds ...
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The Energy Game is Rigged: Fossil Fuel Subsidies Topped $620 Billion in 2011
The energy game is rigged in favor of fossil fuels because we omit the environmental and health costs of burning coal, oil, and natural gas from their prices. Subsidies manipulate the game even further. According to conservative estimates from the Global Subsidies Initiative and the International Energy Agency (IEA), governments around the world spent more than $620 billion to subsidize fossil ...
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Outlook palls for fossil fuel investments
Like most central bank governors, Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, chooses his words carefully. So the financial community – and government policy makers − sat up and took notice earlier this month when Carney, addressing a World Bank seminar on corporate reporting standards, said he was concerned about investments in fossil fuels. “The vast majority of ...
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Time to come clean on energy subsidies?
By Elisa Wood What you don’t know will hurt you. That’s the message in Michael Lewis’ new book, “The Big Short,” which traces today’s worldwide economic downturn to a single problem: the secretive nature of prices in the subprime mortgage bond markets. What’s this got to do with energy? Our industry has its own opaque corners that can cause ...
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A Tipping Point – Our Energy, Investments and Future
As public attention focuses on the upcoming presidential election, trade disputes and gun control, another development will have a sweeping impact on the global economy, our lives and our future. Mounting evidence shows that unsubsidized renewable energy generation coupled with storage is now more cost-efficient than existing fossil fuel generation — despite the massive ...
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How can we pay for green growth? New report provides answers
In a little more than one generation—by the time your grade-schoolers will be seeing their own kids off to school—our planet will be home to 9 billion people. This will create an unprecedented demand for water, food, and energy–and stress the supporting infrastructure required for life in the 21st century. How are we to meet this demand while respecting planetary boundaries? And ...
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Renewables boom in North Africa Still pending.
In North Africa, the renewables sector has great growth potential, but the market needs to be improved: rules, political stability and depowering the fossil sector. The Benban Solar Park in Egypt is the fifth largest in the world. A pharaonic project, so to speak, built about 40 km from the great Aswan Dam, a marvel of modern engineering. Located in the heart of Egypt's southern desert, the ...
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Changing the Business Climate in 2015
The business of climate change has changed. Six years ago, when an international climate treaty in Copenhagen seemed distinctly possible, there was still a discernible gap between the concept of a low-carbon global economy and the capital market’s ability to deliver it. Nascent and costly clean energy technologies, skepticism of climate science and a still deeply-embedded reliance on coal ...
By Ceres
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How to steer clear of the looming climate shock
Stick it to carbon, not the man. The following is excerpted from Climate Shock (2015) by Gernot Wagner and Martin L. Weitzman. Published here with permission from Princeton University Press. Two quick questions: Do you think climate change is an urgent problem? Do you think getting the world off fossil fuels is difficult? If you answered “Yes” to both of these questions, welcome. ...
By Ensia
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Competitive without subsidies: Navigating the booming solar market in Chile
By Susan Kraemer on Nov 11, 2014 Solar developers are flocking to the recently opened new market for renewable energy in Chile, a nation dependent on imported diesel, coal and gas, no fossil fuel subsidies and the world’s best insolation. But what are the on-the-ground challenges? Chile is a long narrow coastal country served almost entirely by a single long grid with a transmission gap ...
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More transparency needed on solar field cost and performance
Novatec Biosol will be participating actively in the 4th International Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Summit (Nov 15-17) as an exhibitor and sponsor. The rise of the Fresnel system to the hierarchy of CSP is one of the issues that will be actively discussed at this industry flagship event with a 700 strong attendance. CSP Today: What are the next steps to achieving greater cost ...
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Subsidy reform to power U.S. clean tech
Clean tech in the United States has been on the rise in recent years— even through the recession and other challenges. Increasing wind power, falling solar costs, expanding electric vehicle markets, government stimulus and other investments have built a global clean tech sector that topped $263 billion last year. In the first quarter of 2012, however, global clean energy investment dropped ...
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On clean energy, time to follow where Google, GE, Buffett lead
Google is backing it. So is Warren Buffett, America’s most-watched investor. GE, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers, is too. Each of these corporate icons is placing big bets and hundreds of millions of dollars on a future powered by wind and solar power. Apple just joined them, announcing plans to power its main U.S. data center in Maiden, North Carolina, entirely with ...
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Helping clean energy entrepreneurs turn on the lights in poor countries
A social entrepreneur invests the little working capital she has to bring solar electricity to a community that –like 1.2 billion people worldwide– lacks access to electricity. The community used to use dirty, expensive and choking kerosene for light to cook by and for children to learn by. The entrepreneur knows she can recoup her costs, because people are willing to pay for ...
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Why we need to invest in Renewable Energy and Storage Technology now
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a harsh reminder that we cannot always rely on our centralized systems to deliver goods and services that protect us from shortages, and that we need back-up. People are scrambling for groceries, toilet paper and face masks as supply chains break down. Hospitals and even governments are struggling to get vital medical supplies. This and other ...
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Renewable Energy is Vital for National Security and Financial Stability
A Tipping Point, Part 2 “Follow the money,” Deep Throat tells Bob Woodward in All The President’s Men. That approach often works for investigators – and for investors. But sometimes it can backfire dramatically, as when all Wall Street flocked to overpriced derivatives that collapsed in 2008. Now, some leading central bankers, regulators and investors ...
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