Long-term climate policy implications of phasing out fossil fuel subsidies

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• 作者：Valeria Jana Schwanitz ; Franziska Piontek ; Christoph Bertram ; Gunnar Luderer
• 关键词：Fossil fuel subsidies ; Climate change ; Sustainable energy transformation
• 刊名：Energy Policy
• 出版年：April, 2014
• 年：2014
• 卷：67
• 期：Complete
• 页码：882-894
• 全文大小：529 K

文摘

It is often argued that fossil fuel subsidies hamper the transition towards a sustainable energy supply as they incentivize wasteful consumption. We assess implications of a subsidy phase-out for the mitigation of climate change and the low-carbon transformation of the energy system, using the global energy-economy model REMIND. We compare our results with those obtained by the International Energy Agency (based on the World Energy Model) and by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD-Model ENV-Linkages), providing the long-term perspective of an intertemporal optimization model. The results are analyzed in the two dimensions of subsidy phase-out and climate policy scenarios. We confirm short-term benefits of phasing-out fossil fuel subsidies as found in prior studies. However, these benefits are only sustained to a small extent in the long term, if dedicated climate policies are weak or nonexistent. Most remarkably we find that a removal of fossil fuel subsidies, if not complemented by other policies, can slow down a global transition towards a renewable based energy system. The reason is that world market prices for fossil fuels may drop due to a removal of subsidies. Thus, low carbon alternatives would encounter comparative disadvantages.