Reforming Natural Resource Subsidies PDF Download

Author: Richard Munson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Natural resources
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description

Author: Jun Rentschler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351175815
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Countries around the world are spending up to $500 billion per year on subsidising fossil fuel consumption. By some estimates, the G20 countries alone are spending around another $450 billion on subsidising fossil fuel production. In addition, the indirect social welfare costs of these subsidies have been shown to be substantial – for instance due to air pollution, road congestion, climate change, and economic inefficiency, to name a few. Considering these numbers, there is no doubt that fossil fuel subsidies cause severe economic distortions that compromise countries’ prospects of achieving equitable and sustainable development. This book provides a guide to the complex challenge of designing, assessing, and implementing effective fossil fuel subsidy reforms. It shows that subsidy reform requires a careful balancing of complex economic and political trade-offs, as well as measures to mitigate adverse effects on vulnerable households and to assist firms with implementing efficiency enhancing measures. Going beyond the purely fiscal perspective, this book emphasises that smart subsidy reforms can contribute to all three dimensions of sustainable development – environment, society, and economy. Over the course of eight chapters, this book considers a wide range of agents and stakeholders, markets, and policy measures in order to distil the key principles of designing effective fossil fuel subsidy reforms. This book will be of great relevance to scholars and policy makers with an interest in energy economics and policy, climate change policy, and sustainable development more broadly.

Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means. Subcommittee on Trade
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Competition, Unfair
Languages : en
Pages : 676

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Book Description

Author: Anja von Moltke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351283197
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The need to reform energy subsidies was one of the pressing issues highlighted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Many types of subsidy, especially those that encourage the production and use of fossil fuel, and other non-renewable forms of energy, are harmful to the environment. They can also have high financial and economic costs, and often only bring few benefits to the people for whom they are intended.Removing, reducing or restructuring such energy subsidies is helpful for the environment and the economy at the same time. Potential social costs in terms of employment in the conventional energy industry or reduced access to energy could be addressed by redirecting the money formerly spent on subsidies to income support, health, environment, education or regional development programmes.Of course, subsidies can have certain positive consequences, particularly where they are aimed at encouraging more sustainable energy production and use. Temporary support for renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies to overcome market barriers, and measures to improve poor or rural households' access to modern, commercial forms of energy, for instance, could be positive measures in support of sustainable development.Based on ground-breaking work undertaken by UNEP and the International Energy Agency, this book aims to raise awareness of the actual and potential impacts of energy subsidies and provide guidance to policy-makers on how to design and implement energy-subsidy reforms. It provides methodologies for analysing the impact of subsidies and their reform, and reviews experiences with energy subsidies in a number of countries and regions. Drawing on these case studies, it analyses the lessons learned as well as the policy implications, and provides guidance on how to overcome resistance to reform.The book provides an analytical framework which aims to set the scene for the detailed discussion of energy-subsidy issues at the country level. It considers how subsidies are defined, how they can be measured, how big they are and how their effects can be assessed. A more detailed discussion of methodological approaches to the assessment of the economic, environmental and social effects of subsidies and their reform is contained in the Annex.Chapters 3–11 of the book contain country case studies from contributing authors, which review various experiences and issues related to energy subsidies in selected countries, but do not strive for a common approach. They are organised along geographical lines, beginning with a review of energy subsidies generally in OECD countries. Case studies of energy subsidies in transition economies – the Czech and Slovak Republics (Chapter 4) and Russia (Chapter 5) – follow. Three studies of Asian countries focus on the costs of different types of energy subsidy: electricity subsidies in India (Chapter 6), oil subsidies in Indonesia (Chapter 7) and energy subsidies generally in Korea (Chapter 8). Chapter 9 reviews the effect of energy subsidies in Iran and suggests a pragmatic approach to reforming them. This is followed by an assessment of the LPG subsidy programme in Senegal (Chapter 10) and an analysis of the effects of removing coal and oil subsides in Chile (Chapter 11).Chapter 12 analyses the lessons learned from these case studies, focusing on the economic, environmental and social effects and their implications for policy. Finally, Chapter 13 discusses the implications of these findings and makes practical recommendations for designing and implementing policy reforms.This book will be essential for both practitioners and academics involved in the energy sector and for governments and policy-makers wishing to examine the reform of energy subsidies.

Author:
Publisher: UNEP/Earthprint
ISBN: 9280722778
Category : Energy
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description

Author: International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1498342396
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 69

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Book Description
Energy subsidies have wide-ranging economic consequences. While aimed at protecting consumers, subsidies aggravate fiscal imbalances, crowd-out priority public spending, and depress private investment, including in the energy sector. Subsidies also distort resource allocation by encouraging excessive energy consumption, artificially promoting capital-intensive industries, reducing incentives for investment in renewable energy, and accelerating the depletion of natural resources. Most subsidy benefits are captured by higher-income households, reinforcing inequality. Even future generations are affected through the damaging effects of increased energy consumption on global warming. This paper provides: (i) the most comprehensive estimates of energy subsidies currently available for 176 countries; and (ii) an analysis of ?how to do energy subsidy reform, drawing on insights from 22 country case studies undertaken by IMF staff and analyses carried out by other institutions.

Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Natural Resources. Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description

Author: Paolo Verme
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319529269
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
This book is an analysis of energy and food subsidies in the MENA region between 2010 and 2014. Using the World Bank’s proprietary SUBSIM model, the book studies the distribution of subsidies and the simulation of subsidy reforms across eight countries within in a partial equilibrium framework. The distributional analysis of subsidies provides information on who benefits from existing subsidies, while the simulations of subsidy reforms provide information on the outcomes of the reforms in terms of government budget, household welfare, poverty, inequality, and the trade-offs between these outcomes. This focus provides governments with the essential information they need to make decisions on subsidy reforms and consumers with a clear sense of which programs and reforms are successful. The book highlights the historical roots of subsidies, the real trigger of subsidy reforms, and the complexity of subsidy reforms. It discusses the pros and cons of radical and gradualist approaches to reforms, the use of compensation mechanisms and their implications, the advantages and disadvantages of public information campaigns, the political economy of targeting different economic populations, the political timing of reforms, and whether, overall, the reforms observed in the MENA region have been successful. The first book on subsidies in the MENA region that is based on primary micro data, this book is useful for researchers and graduate students studying political economy and working with microsimulation modelling instruments as well as government officials engaged in subsidies reforms, research institutes and private consulting groups advising governments on subsidy reforms.

Author: Mr.Benedict J. Clements
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1484339169
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
Energy subsidies are aimed at protecting consumers, however, subsidies aggravate fiscal imbalances, crowd out priority public spending, and depress private investment, including in the energy sector. This book provides the most comprehensive estimates of energy subsidies currently available for 176 countries and an analysis of “how to do” energy subsidy reform, drawing on insights from 22 country case studies undertaken by the IMF staff and analyses carried out by other institutions.

Author: Gabriela Inchauste
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464810087
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
This book proposes a simple framework for understanding the political economy of subsidy reform and applies it to four in-depth country studies covering more than 30 distinct episodes of reform. Five key lessons emerge. First, energy subsidies often follow a life cycle, beginning as a way to stabilize prices and reduce exposure to price volatility for low-income consumers. However, as they grow in size and political power, they become entrenched. Second, subsidy reform strategies vary because the underlying political economy problems vary. When benefits are concentrated, satisfying (or isolating) interest groups with alternative policies is an important condition for effective reform. When benefits are diffuse, it can be much harder to identify and manage the political coalition needed for reform. Third, governments vary in their administrative and political capacities to implement difficult energy subsidy reforms. Fourth, improvements in social protection systems are often critical to the success of reforms because they make it possible to target assistance to those most in need. Finally, the most interesting cases involve governments that take a strategic approach to the challenges of political economy. In these settings, fixing energy subsidies is central to the governments’ missions of retaining political power and reorganizing how the government delivers benefits to the population. These cases are examples of “reform engineering,†? where governments actively seek to create the capacity to implement alternative policies, depoliticize tariffs, and build credibility around alternative policies. The most successful reforms involve active efforts by policy leaders to identify the political forces supporting energy subsidies and redirect or inoculate them.