Fossil fuel companies received $5.9 trillion in subsidies last year, which works out at $11 million per minute, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says in a new report. The subsidies represent 6.8% of the global GDP and are expected to rise to 7.4% by 2025, says the report, which looked into the benefits that fossil fuel companies receive in 191 countries. The benefits that fossil fuel companies enjoy include direct subsidies that reduce prices (8%) and tax exemptions (6%), as well as indirect subsidies due to the economic costs of lives caused by air pollution (42%) and extreme weather events caused by global warming (29%), as well as congestion and road accidents (15%). The IMF said scrapping subsidies could help prevent nearly 1 million annual deaths from air pollution alone.
Despite efforts to invest in renewable energy and decarbonize the transportation sector, the IMF found that fossil fuel subsidies have increased in recent years and the organization forecasts that they will continue increasing, even though G7 nations had previously agreed to scrap fossil fuel subsidies by 2025.
— source treehugger.com | Oct 21, 2021
