Energy Subsidy Reform

Energy subsidies are aimed at protecting consumers, however, subsidies aggravate fiscal imbalances, crowd out priority public spending, and depress private investment, including in the energy sector. This book provides the most comprehensive estimates of energy subsidies currently available for 176 countries and an analysis of “how to do” energy subsidy reform, drawing on insights from 22 country case studies undertaken by the IMF staff and analyses carried out by other institutions.

This book proposes a simple framework for understanding the political economy of subsidy reform and applies it to four in-depth country studies covering more than 30 distinct episodes of reform. Five key lessons emerge. First, energy subsidies often follow a life cycle, beginning as a way to stabilize prices and reduce exposure to price volatility for low-income consumers. However, as they grow in size and political power, they become entrenched. Second, subsidy reform strategies vary because the underlying political economy problems vary. When benefits are concentrated, satisfying (or isolating) interest groups with alternative policies is an important condition for effective reform. When benefits are diffuse, it can be much harder to identify and manage the political coalition needed for reform. Third, governments vary in their administrative and political capacities to implement difficult energy subsidy reforms. Fourth, improvements in social protection systems are often critical to the success of reforms because they make it possible to target assistance to those most in need. Finally, the most interesting cases involve governments that take a strategic approach to the challenges of political economy. In these settings, fixing energy subsidies is central to the governments’ missions of retaining political power and reorganizing how the government delivers benefits to the population. These cases are examples of “reform engineering,†? where governments actively seek to create the capacity to implement alternative policies, depoliticize tariffs, and build credibility around alternative policies. The most successful reforms involve active efforts by policy leaders to identify the political forces supporting energy subsidies and redirect or inoculate them.

Energy subsidies have wide-ranging economic consequences. While aimed at protecting consumers, subsidies aggravate fiscal imbalances, crowd-out priority public spending, and depress private investment, including in the energy sector. Subsidies also distort resource allocation by encouraging excessive energy consumption, artificially promoting capital-intensive industries, reducing incentives for investment in renewable energy, and accelerating the depletion of natural resources. Most subsidy benefits are captured by higher-income households, reinforcing inequality. Even future generations are affected through the damaging effects of increased energy consumption on global warming. This paper provides: (i) the most comprehensive estimates of energy subsidies currently available for 176 countries; and (ii) an analysis of ?how to do energy subsidy reform, drawing on insights from 22 country case studies undertaken by IMF staff and analyses carried out by other institutions.

Poorly implemented energy subsidies are economically costly to taxpayers and damage the environment. This book aims to provide lessons from a sample of twenty case studies to help policymakers address implementation challenges and overcome political economy and affordability constraints.

This supplement presents country case studies reviewing energy subsidy reform experiences, which are the basis for the reform lessons identified in the main paper. The selection of countries for the case studies reflects the availability of data and of previously documented evidence on country-specific reforms. The 22 country case studies were also chosen to provide cases from all regions and a mix of outcomes from reform. The studies cover 19 countries, including seven from sub-Saharan Africa, two in developing Asia, three in the Middle East and North Africa, four in Latin America and the Caribbean, and three in Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS. The case studies are organized by energy product, with 14 studies of the reform of petroleum product subsidies, seven studies of the reform of electricity subsidies, and a case study of subsidy reform for coal. The larger number of studies on fuel subsidies reflects the wider availability of data and past studies for these reforms. The structure of each case study is similar, with each one providing the context of the reform and a description of the reforms; discussion of the impact of the reform on energy prices or subsidies and its success or failure; mitigating measures that were implemented in an attempt to generate public support for the reform and offset adverse effects on the poor; and, finally, identification of lessons for designing reforms.

The need to reform energy subsidies was one of the pressing issues highlighted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Many types of subsidy, especially those that encourage the production and use of fossil fuel, and other non-renewable forms of energy, are harmful to the environment. They can also have high financial and economic costs, and often only bring few benefits to the people for whom they are intended.Removing, reducing or restructuring such energy subsidies is helpful for the environment and the economy at the same time. Potential social costs in terms of employment in the conventional energy industry or reduced access to energy could be addressed by redirecting the money formerly spent on subsidies to income support, health, environment, education or regional development programmes.Of course, subsidies can have certain positive consequences, particularly where they are aimed at encouraging more sustainable energy production and use. Temporary support for renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies to overcome market barriers, and measures to improve poor or rural households' access to modern, commercial forms of energy, for instance, could be positive measures in support of sustainable development.Based on ground-breaking work undertaken by UNEP and the International Energy Agency, this book aims to raise awareness of the actual and potential impacts of energy subsidies and provide guidance to policy-makers on how to design and implement energy-subsidy reforms. It provides methodologies for analysing the impact of subsidies and their reform, and reviews experiences with energy subsidies in a number of countries and regions. Drawing on these case studies, it analyses the lessons learned as well as the policy implications, and provides guidance on how to overcome resistance to reform.The book provides an analytical framework which aims to set the scene for the detailed discussion of energy-subsidy issues at the country level. It considers how subsidies are defined, how they can be measured, how big they are and how their effects can be assessed. A more detailed discussion of methodological approaches to the assessment of the economic, environmental and social effects of subsidies and their reform is contained in the Annex.Chapters 3–11 of the book contain country case studies from contributing authors, which review various experiences and issues related to energy subsidies in selected countries, but do not strive for a common approach. They are organised along geographical lines, beginning with a review of energy subsidies generally in OECD countries. Case studies of energy subsidies in transition economies – the Czech and Slovak Republics (Chapter 4) and Russia (Chapter 5) – follow. Three studies of Asian countries focus on the costs of different types of energy subsidy: electricity subsidies in India (Chapter 6), oil subsidies in Indonesia (Chapter 7) and energy subsidies generally in Korea (Chapter 8). Chapter 9 reviews the effect of energy subsidies in Iran and suggests a pragmatic approach to reforming them. This is followed by an assessment of the LPG subsidy programme in Senegal (Chapter 10) and an analysis of the effects of removing coal and oil subsides in Chile (Chapter 11).Chapter 12 analyses the lessons learned from these case studies, focusing on the economic, environmental and social effects and their implications for policy. Finally, Chapter 13 discusses the implications of these findings and makes practical recommendations for designing and implementing policy reforms.This book will be essential for both practitioners and academics involved in the energy sector and for governments and policy-makers wishing to examine the reform of energy subsidies.

This much-needed book provides an empirically-grounded, and theoretically informed account of international law sources, mechanisms, initiatives and institutions which address and affect the practice of subsidising fossil fuel consumption and production. Drawing on recent scholarship on emerging international governance mechanisms, ‘informal’ international law-making and regime interaction, it offers suggestions, and critiques suggestions of others, for how the international law framework could be employed more effectively and appropriately to respond to environmentally and fiscally harmful fossil fuel subsidies.

This report looks at the fiscal, environmental and social impacts of energy subsidy reform in Moldova with a particular focus on energy affordability.