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.
In 1934, Lewis Mumford critiqued the industrial energy system as a key source of authoritarian economic and political tendencies in modern life. Recent debate continues to engage issues of energy authoritarianism, focusing on the contest between energy-driven globalization (the spread of energy deregulation and the simultaneous consolidation of the oil, coal, and gas industries) and the so-called "sustainable energy" strategy that celebrates the local and community scale characteristics of renewable energy. Including theoretical inquiries and case studies by distinguished writers, Transforming Power is divided into three parts: Energy, Environment, and Society; The Politics of Conventional Energy; and The Politics of Sustainable Energy. It interrogates current contemporary energy assumptions, exploring the reflexive relationship between energy, environment, and society, and examining energy as a social project. Some of these have promised a prosperous future founded upon technological advances that further modernize the modern energy system, such as "inherently safe" nuclear power, environmentally friendly coal gasification, and the advent of a wealthier, cleaner world powered by fuel cells; and the "green technologies," said by advocates to prefigure a revival of human scale development, local self-determination, and a commitment to ecological balance. >br> This volume offers a timely engagement of the social issues surrounding energy conflicts and contradictions. It will be of interest to policymakers, energy and environmental experts, sociologists, and historians of technology. John Byrne is director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy (CEEP) and Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at the University of Delaware. Noah Toly is a research associate and Ph.D. candidate in the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Delaware. Leigh Glover is policy fellow and assistant professor in the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Delaware.
The reform of energy subsidies is an important but challenging issue for sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. There is a relatively large theoretical and empirical literature on this issue. While this paper relies on that literature, too, it tailors its discussion to SSA countries to respond to the following questions: Why it is important to reduce energy subsidies? What are the difficulties involved in energy subsidy reform? How best can a subsidy reform be implemented? This paper uses various sources of information on SSA countries: quantitative assessments, surveys, and individual (but standardized) case studies.
In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries price subsidies are common, especially on food and fuels. However, these are neither well targeted nor cost effective as a social protection tool, often benefiting mainly the better off instead of the poor and vulnerable. This paper explores the challenges of replacing generalized price subsidies with more equitable social safety net instruments, including the short-term inflationary effects, and describes the features of successful subsidy reforms.
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.
This comprehensive volume provides the first book-length account on the politics of fossil fuel subsidies. This title is also available as Open Access.
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.
During the 1990s, a new paradigm for power sector reform was put forward emphasizing the restructuring of utilities, the creation of regulators, the participation of the private sector, and the establishment of competitive power markets. Twenty-five years later, only a handful of developing countries have fully implemented these Washington Consensus policies. Across the developing world, reforms were adopted rather selectively, resulting in a hybrid model, in which elements of market orientation coexist with continued state dominance of the sector. This book aims to revisit and refresh thinking on power sector reform approaches for developing countries. The approach relies heavily on evidence from the past, drawing both on broad global trends and deep case material from 15 developing countries. It is also forward looking, considering the implications of new social and environmental policy goals, as well as the emerging technological disruptions. A nuanced picture emerges. Although regulation has been widely adopted, practice often falls well short of theory, and cost recovery remains an elusive goal. The private sector has financed a substantial expansion of generation capacity; yet, its contribution to power distribution has been much more limited, with efficiency levels that can sometimes be matched by well-governed public utilities. Restructuring and liberalization have been beneficial in a handful of larger middle-income nations but have proved too complex for most countries to implement. Based on these findings, the report points to three major policy implications. First, reform efforts need to be shaped by the political and economic context of the country. The 1990s reform model was most successful in countries that had reached certain minimum conditions of power sector development and offered a supportive political environment. Second, countries found alternative institutional pathways to achieving good power sector outcomes, making a case for greater pluralism. Among the top performers, some pursued the full set of market-oriented reforms, while others retained a more important role for the state. Third, reform efforts should be driven and tailored to desired policy outcomes and less preoccupied with following a predetermined process, particularly since the twenty-first-century century agenda has added decarbonization and universal access to power sector outcomes. The Washington Consensus reforms, while supportive of the twenty-first-century century agenda, will not be able to deliver on them alone and will require complementary policy measures
While energy efficiency projects could partly meet new energy demand more cheaply than new supplies, weak economic institutions in developing and transitional economies impede developing and financing energy efficiency retrofits. This book analyzes these difficulties, suggests a 3-part model for projectizing and financing energy efficiency retrofits, and presents thirteen case studies to illustrate the issues and principles involved.
"In many ways, everything we once knew about energy resources and technologies has been impacted by: the longstanding scientific consensus on climate change and related support for renewable energy; the affordability of extraction of unconventional fuels; increasing demand for energy resources by middle- and low-income nations; new regional and global stakeholders; fossil fuel discoveries and emerging renewable technologies; awareness of (trans)local politics; and rising interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the need for energy justice. Research on these and related topics now appears frequently in social science academic journals-in broad-based journals, such as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and Review of International Political Economy, as well as those focused specifically on energy (e.g., Energy Research & Social Science and Energy Policy), the environment (Global Environmental Politics), natural resources (Resources Policy), and extractive industries (Extractive Industries and Society). The Oxford Handbook of Energy Politics synthesizes and aggregates this substantively diverse literature to provide insights into, and a foundation for teaching and research on, critical energy issues primarily in the areas of international relations and comparative politics. Its primary goals are to further develop the energy politics scholarship and community, and generate sophisticated new work that will benefit a variety of scholars working on energy issues"--
