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Summary
- Governments invest 6 times more money in fossil fuel subsidies than in renewable energies, despite the disastrous impact on health, the planet, and the economy.
- Fossil fuel subsidies equated to US$7 trillion in 2022, leading to 8.1 million deaths from air pollution in 2021.
- Subsidies for fossil fuels disproportionately benefit the rich, harm the poor, and undermine the shift to renewable energy solutions.
- Reforming fossil fuel subsidies could generate significant tax revenue, reduce emissions, and prevent millions of deaths caused by air pollution.
Despite millions of people dying from the consequences of climate change-related events each year, governments are still investing six times more money on supporting fossil fuels than on transitioning to renewable energies. However, leading economic organizations agree that these subsidies are expensive, inefficient and harmful to the economy.
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In 2022, global fossil fuel subsidies were US$7 trillion, or 7% of global GDP – roughly equal to the total economies of the UK and Germany combined. Meanwhile, in 2021, exposure to air pollution led to 8.1 million deaths globally.
Around the world, governments are pouring trillions of taxpayer money to support an industry that boasts of billions of dollars in profits each year. It is also an industry that can be directly tied to the deaths of millions of human beings, is the biggest contributor to climate change and the destruction of the planet’s ecosystems. So why are governments still subsidizing it?
