Why Have Governments Pledged to Eliminate Fossil Fuel Subsidies?
At their 2009 Summit meeting in Pittsburgh, the leaders of the Group of Twenty principal world economies pledged to “phase out ... over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies ...[that] encourage wasteful consumption, distort markets, impede investment in clean energy sources and impede efforts to deal with climate change.”1 At the time subsidies to fossil fuels by the federal government in Canada were estimated at around $1 billion a year.2