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Comment by rmchugh | Hacker News Reader

globally the fossil fuel industry receives over four times as much in subsidies as the renewable energy industry.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-12/fossil-fu...

That's a bit misleading. Many emerging markets countries subsidize the cost of gasoline and diesel at the retail level so that their citizens can afford it. Effectively the governments import oil (or produce it) and then sell it domestically far below where it would trade on the open market. And most headline "subsidy" figures include things like R&D tax credits, benefits that every other industry receives as well. In reality, the actual number of bonafide subsidy is a small fraction of what you've suggested (on the order of $15B in the US, one of the largest fossil fuel markets).

So yes, in some sense the "fossil fuel industry" is being subsidized, but it's not like they're just receiving $550B in cash from world governments. Many of these countries sell oil domestically far below what the cost of production is. So if you don't subsidize it, their citizens simply wouldn't be able to drive cars or run generators. The oil companies simply can't produce as cheaply as these citizens would need to be able to afford it.

Of course, that would be a great force for incentivizing cheap renewable tech (or bicycles, etc) but the motivation behind said "subsidies" are quality of life and social unrest, and not corporate welfare.

> Many emerging markets countries subsidize the cost of gasoline and diesel at the retail level so that their citizens can afford it.

Which is still a petroleum subsidy. They could just give the citizens the equivalent amount of cash and then it wouldn't be.

What? Either way it's the same. Those people would just go use the cash to buy gasoline. It's the exact same thing.

It isn't. They could use cash to do something else where possible, like help pay for housing which is closer to where they work, or buy a computer so they can work from home, or buy a hybrid car etc.

I've dug into these numbers and it's rarely clear how "subsidies" are defined. Often tax breaks and "unpaid externalities" are included in the total subsidies. "$X of subsidies for fossil fuels" usually does not mean the gov't gave $X to fossil fuel companies.

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