fossil fuel subsidies

Biden Offshore Drilling Plan Continues ‘Dangerous Cycle’

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Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

The Biden administration announced plans for three offshore fossil fuel lease sales for the Gulf of Mexico in 2025, 2027, and 2029.  (Photo: nightman1965/Getty Images)

“Offshore oil and gas drilling is not only dirty and dangerous, but it also supercharges the existing climate crisis,” said one campaigner.

The Biden administration on Friday finalized a five-year plan for offshore fossil fuel leasing that was initially released in September and sharply condemned as a “climate nightmare.”

The Department of the Interior (DOI) highlighted in a statement Friday that the 2024-29 National Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing Program has the fewest sales in history, with just three for the Gulf of Mexico set to be held in 2025, 2027, and 2029.

The DOI also stressed that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed last year by President Joe Biden “prohibits the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) from issuing a lease for offshore wind development unless the agency has offered at least 60 million acres for oil and gas leasing on the OCS in the previous year.”

“BOEM continues to treat the Gulf as a region where community health and well-being can be sacrificed to allow continued oil and gas production.”

That part of the IRA is one of the key reasons it has been criticized by climate campaigners, who continue to warn that the landmark package is far from enough to meet the U.S. goal of halving planet-heating emissions by the end of this decade.

The DOI’s plan outraged the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) for not being friendly enough to the fossil fuel industry while advocates for the planet warned that it’s not bold enough given the worsening climate emergency.

“Offshore oil and gas drilling is not only dirty and dangerous, but it also supercharges the existing climate crisis,” Beth Lowell, Oceana’s vice president for the United States, declared in a Friday statement about the finalized program. She pointed out that the process actually began under former President Donald Trump, who proposed 47 leasing sales.

“This five-year plan started with President Trump proposing to open nearly all U.S. waters to offshore oil drilling and ends with President Biden’s final plan that is the smallest to date,” she said. “The footprint of offshore drilling was not expanded, but the dangerous cycle of drilling and spilling must end.”

After the Biden administration released its proposal in September, Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Irene Gutierrez wrote the following month that “BOEM continues to treat the Gulf as a region where community health and well-being can be sacrificed to allow continued oil and gas production.”

“BOEM also fails to account for the severe risks from additional oil and gas leasing to the Gulf ecosystem and species like the critically endangered Rice’s whale,” Gutierrez charged. “BOEM’s analysis also treats catastrophic oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon disaster as events that are speculative and unlikely to repeat again, and the program excludes such spills from its analysis.”

“In our comments to the proposed program and in other advocacy, we urged BOEM to issue a program with no new lease sales. The agency has ample authority to do so,” she noted. “Further, declining fossil fuel demand and existing energy reserves mean that no new offshore leasing is needed for at least the next 30 years to meet national energy needs. BOEM could have issued a zero-lease sale plan, but declined to do so, despite calls from a wide range of community and environmental groups for no new leasing in the Gulf.”

The DOI plan comes near the end of what experts have said will be the hottest year on record. It also comes on the heels of United Nations climate talks that scientists called “a tragedy for the planet,” given that the final deal out of COP28 called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels,” but did not endorse the “phaseout” demanded by civil society and most participating countries.

Biden—who is seeking reelection next year and may face off against Trump—has previously come under fire from frontline communities and climate organizations for skipping that U.N. summit, supporting the Willow oil project and Mountain Valley Pipeline, enabling the expansion of liquefied natural gas exports, and refusing to declare a national climate emergency.

On Thursday, the Biden administration released new proposed guidance on clean energy tax credits from the IRA.

“President Biden must do so much more if he wants to be taken seriously by young voters,” Michele Weindling, political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said in response to the guidance. “He is overseeing an explosion in oil and gas production that has resulted in the U.S. producing more fossil fuels than ever before.”

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingBiden Offshore Drilling Plan Continues ‘Dangerous Cycle’

Statement by climate activist and blogger dizzy deep: We need to end Fossil Fuel Subsidies

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A statement by dizzy deep of the https://onaquietday.org blog.

Scientists protest at UK Parliament 5 September 2023.
Scientists protest at UK Parliament 5 September 2023.

Urgent action on climate is needed. To achieve this we must end fossil fuel subsidies. Fossil fuels are subsidised to the high heavens by governments worldwide. Without these subsidies, fossil fuels will stay in the ground.

Regardless of whether COP28 does this, it should be our priority as activists to end fossil fuel subsidies as soon as we are able to. Be aware that we’re dealing with slippery, oily characters. We need to make certain that all fossil fuel subsidies are ended, that no hidden ones persist.

Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.

2/12/2023 later

G7 nations pledge to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2025

IMF Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data: 2023 Update

IMF Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data: 2023 Update

Author/Editor:

Simon Black ; Antung A. Liu ; Ian W.H. Parry ; Nate Vernon

Publication Date:

August 24, 2023

Electronic Access:

Free Download. Use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this PDF file

Disclaimer: IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.

Summary:

This paper provides a comprehensive global, regional, and country-level update of: (i) efficient fossil fuel prices to reflect supply and environmental costs; and (ii) subsidies implied by charging below efficient fuel prices. Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion in 2022 or 7.1 percent of GDP. Explicit subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) have more than doubled since 2020 but are still only 18 percent of the total subsidy, while nearly 60 percent is due to undercharging for global warming and local air pollution. Differences between efficient prices and retail fuel prices are large and pervasive, for example, 80 percent of global coal consumption was priced at below half of its efficient level in 2022. Full fossil fuel price reform would reduce global carbon dioxide emissions to an estimated 43 percent below baseline levels in 2030 (in line with keeping global warming to 1.5-2oC), while raising revenues worth 3.6 percent of global GDP and preventing 1.6 million local air pollution deaths per year. Accompanying spreadsheets provide detailed results for 170 countries.

Series: Working Paper No. 2023/169

Subject: Energy subsidies Environment Expenditure Fuel prices Greenhouse gas emissions Non-renewable resources Prices

Frequency: regular

English

Publication Date: August 24, 2023

ISBN/ISSN: 9798400249006/1018-5941

Stock No: WPIEA2023169

Format: Paper

Pages: 32

Continue ReadingStatement by climate activist and blogger dizzy deep: We need to end Fossil Fuel Subsidies

FFS: Publically financed Fossil Fuel Subsidies

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Extinction Rebellion NL image reads STOP FOSSIELE SUBSIDIES
Extinction Rebellion NL image reads STOP FOSSIELE SUBSIDIES

https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/fossil-fuel-subsidies-public-finance

Like it or not, we’re all paying the fossil fuel industry to destroy the planet every time we do our taxes.

That’s right. Each of us is chipping in our hard-earned dollars [, Euros or Pounds], all to an industry earning billions in profits every year. One whose product is heating up our planet and sowing more and more climatic chaos the higher the thermometer rises.

We’re doing it through fossil fuel subsidies. And the time to end them is now.

…

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), fossil fuel subsidies reached an all-time high of $7 trillion USD last year, costing the equivalent of over 7% of global GDP. To put it in more relatable terms, it’s “more than governments spend annually on education and about two thirds of what they spend on healthcare.” Fossil fuel subsidies rose by $2 trillion USD over the past two years alone.

Fossil Fuel Subsidies reached all time high of 7 trillion US Dollars

In general, most fossil fuel subsidies are implicit. This means that they fail to consider the negative externalities of fossil fuel production, such as the environmental and human health consequences of GHG emissions and particulate matter pollution. While it may seem difficult to account for these costs, the IMF estimates that implicit government subsidies resulted in failing to cover over $5 trillion worth of environmental damages last year.

…

https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/fossil-fuel-subsidies-public-finance

FFS: Publically financed Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Continue ReadingFFS: Publically financed Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Carbon Capture’s Publicly Funded Failure

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https://priceofoil.org/2023/11/29/ccs-data/

Extinction Rebellion NL image reads STOP FOSSIELE SUBSIDIES
Extinction Rebellion NL image reads STOP FOSSIELE SUBSIDIES

Summary

  • Governments have spent over $20 billion – and have approved up to $200 billion more – of public money on carbon capture and storage (CCS), providing a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.
  • 79% of operating carbon capture capacity globally sends captured CO2 to produce more oil (via Enhanced Oil Recovery).
  • Many of the largest CCS projects in the world overpromise and under-deliver, operating far below capacity.

Carbon, Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCS or CCUS) has a 50-year history of failure. CCS is often presented as a new technology to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by trapping CO2 from a smokestack or directly from the air and then injecting it into the ground for storage. In fact, CCS was first developed in the 1970s to enhance oil production, and increased oil production remains its primary use. Oil Change International research finds that 79% of operating carbon capture capacity globally sends captured CO2 to produce more oil (via Enhanced Oil Recovery).

The story of CCS as a method to reduce CO2 emissions is one of overpromising and under-delivering. Analysis after analysis has concluded that CCS is not a climate solution. In September 2023, the International Energy Agency noted that: “The history of CCUS has largely been one of “underperformance” and “unmet expectations.”

Yet Big Oil consistently tells us that CCS is central to the fight against climate change. Chevron, for example, says that CCS will make a “lower carbon future possible.”

In the run-up to COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, the oil industry and many governments are ramping up their promotion of CCS as an integral part of the collective response to climate change. There has been a flurry of renewed government commitments, conferences, and new industry initiatives, coupled with continuing misinformation. Governments around the world have spent over $20 billion – and have approved up to $200 billion more – of public money on CCS, providing a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.

In October 2023, ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, whose CEO, Sultan Al Jaber, is the COP28 President, announced that it planned to double its CCS capacity to 10 million tonnes per year. But ADNOC’s existing flagship CCS project, which is supposed to capture emissions from a steel plant, is only designed to capture around 17% of that plant’s maximum CO2 pollution. Furthermore, there is no publicly available information about how much CO2 it has actually captured. What the CCS project does capture is used to increase oil production, leading to more emissions when burned.

As governments prepare to spend up to $200 million of public money on CCS, it must be clear: CCS is a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry, not people and planet.

…

Subsidies

Governments have spent over $20 billion – and have legislated or announced policies that could spend up to $200 billion more – of public money on CCS, providing a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.

Key facts

  • Ten governments have already spent at least $22 billion on CCS and Fossil-Hydrogen.
  • This number is likely very conservative due to a shocking lack of transparency on government subsidies and tax credits.
  • Twelve governments have approved policies that could funnel up to $200 billion more toward CCS and Hydrogen.

…

Carbon Capture Serves Oil and Gas Production

A Majority of Carbon Capture Projects Serve To Produce More Oil and Gas, Not Reduce Emissions

Data from our project’s database and analysis from leading experts such as IEEFA and others show that the majority of carbon capture (CCS) projects exist only to enable oil and gas production and fail to reduce overall emissions.

Key facts

  • 79% of operating carbon capture capacity globally sends captured CO2 to produce more oil (via Enhanced Oil Recovery)
  • 67% of operating carbon capture capacity globally captures emissions from processing CO2-rich gas.

…

Read this article at https://priceofoil.org/2023/11/29/ccs-data/

Continue ReadingCarbon Capture’s Publicly Funded Failure

UK Conservatives heading to elections with a growing green policy gap

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UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak denies climate change.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak denies climate change.

https://www.energymonitor.ai/policy/net-zero-policy/weekly-data-uk-conservatives-heading-to-elections-with-a-growing-green-policy-gap/

There is now a 21% share of required emissions cuts in the UK’s 2028–32 carbon budget that is not covered by policy.

…

Green Alliance’s Net Zero Policy Tracker analyses the gap between confirmed policy and what would be required for net zero by 2050, according to the UK’s five-yearly carbon budgets. 

At the start of 2023, there was a 13% share of required emissions cuts in the 2028–32 carbon budget that was not covered by policy. Following the government’s so-called Energy Security Day in March – which saw 2,800 pages of new energy and climate policy – the share of emissions cuts not covered by policy grew to 15%. 

Since Sunak’s latest speech in March, the gap has grown to 21%: a near-doubling of the gap that existed at the start of the year. 

“The Prime Minister delayed vital policies that would have lowered energy bills, increased UK energy security, and played a critical role in creating a green and growing economy,” said Chris Venables, Green Alliance’s deputy director of politics and partnerships, in a statement following Sunak’s speech. “This represents a deeply alarming pivot that has undermined business confidence, and put at serious risk the hard-won, cross-party and evidence-based approach we have had to actually reaching our legally binding net-zero targets.”

…

https://www.energymonitor.ai/policy/net-zero-policy/weekly-data-uk-conservatives-heading-to-elections-with-a-growing-green-policy-gap/

Continue ReadingUK Conservatives heading to elections with a growing green policy gap