Cost of subsidising fossil fuels is $US5.3 trillion a year

H

ow large are global energy subsidies? The answer: quite a lot larger than we thought, according to new estimates from the International Monetary Fund, which puts the cost of subsidising fossil fuels at an enormous $US5.3 trillion a year, or around $US10 million a minute every day.

The eye-watering figure, based on calculations the IMF describes as “extremely robust,” is more than double the projected 2014 estimate the IMF released around this time last year, and amounts to more than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.

It is somewhat of an irony, then, that the IMF’s new figure of $5.3 trillion is largely attributed to polluters not paying the costs – social welfare, health, environmental and broader economic – imposed on governments for the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Read Sophie Vorrath’s story on Renew-economy - “Fossil fuels subsidies cost world $5.3 trillion a year – $10m a minute.”

(Money will always trump morality – the idea that the fossil fuels industry should see a moral need to step back from its assault on the planet appears simple and unequivocally the right thing to do, but then the picture becomes obscured and the clarity of the decision sullied when it can be seen that the industry has duped the world and presently wallows in money willingly handed over by the public, that’s you and me – yes, morally they should hand back the cash and pay for the damage they are causing to the commons, but that is about forgoing the comforts we are paying for – Robert McLean.)