Governments last year gave US$43 billion to US$46 billion of support to renewable energy through tax credits, guaranteed electricity prices (feed-in tariffs) and alternative energy credits, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said in a statement. That compares with the US$557 billion that the International Energy Agency last month said was spent to subsidize fossil fuels in 2008. That works out to 12 times the support for dirty versus clean energy.
Between 2002 and 2008, fossil fuels received $72 billion in US federal subsidies, with 98% of that going to conventional energy sources like coal and oil. During those same six years, solar power received less than $1 billion, a massive disparity that helped keep oil and gas prices artificially low and made it impossible for renewable energy sources to gain any real ground.
Why do we continue to subsidize fossil fuel industries at the expense of a clean, healthy and prosperous future? If we want solar, wind, and other renewable resources to succeed, we must stop funding fossil fuels. And we must stop now.
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