G20 members are spending $US452 billion ($A640.50 billion) a year subsidising fossil fuel
production – nearly four times global spending on renewable energy subsidies – despite pledging to phase out fossil fuel support to tackle climate change.
GLOBAL subsidies for renewable energy production amount to just $US121 billion a year, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a UK-based think-tank, and research group Oil Change International said in their report.
The much greater support given to fossil fuels than to clean energy technologies by the G20, the world’s biggest economies, makes it harder to cut greenhouse gas emissions and slow climate change, said the report issued before the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, that runs November 15-16.”G20 governments are paying fossil fuel producers to undermine their own policies on climate change,” the ODI’s Shelagh Whitley said in a statement.”Scrapping these subsidies would rebalance energy markets and allow a level playing field for clean and efficient alternatives.”
G20 countries backed calls to phase out fossil fuel subsidies at meetings in 2009 and 2014, but are not making significant progress, the report said.G20 governments should adopt strict timelines for phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and transfer government financial support to greener forms of energy, it said.
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