Friendly policies keep US oil and coal afloat far more than we thought (2017)

Re:Friendly policies keep US oil and coal afloat far more th... by nmeofthestate on Monday June 24, 2019 @09:24AM (#20263296)

If you look at the graph of subsidies, and adjust to percentage of generation, then you can see that renewables receive a higher level of subsidy.

A big chunk of the "subsidy to non-renewables" is support for heating for the poor. This allocation is by virtue of most generation being non-renewable. When we move to more-expensive renewables, this support will be bigger and will have moved to the renewable column. So, it's not really a subsidy to non-renewables.

This is just a couple of things I noticed - you need to be alert to creative accounting when it comes to renewables, because many people tend to be motivated by ideology rather than numbers.

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Re:Friendly policies keep US oil and coal afloat far more th... by thinkcontext on Monday June 24, 2019 @10:00AM (#20263573)

> A big chunk of the "subsidy to non-renewables" is support for heating for the poor.

They address this directly, guess you missed it.

"OCI is only counting direct production subsidies. As they acknowledge, that leaves out a great deal.

For one thing, it leaves out the annual $14.5 billion in consumption subsidies — things like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps lower-income residents pay their (fuel oil) heating bills."

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Re:Friendly policies keep US oil and coal afloat far more th... by nmeofthestate on Monday June 24, 2019 @12:29PM (#20265283)

That's what I'm referring to.

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