Fossil fuel subsidy reforms have become more fragile

Abstract

Since the mid-2010s, many governments have pledged to reduce their subsidies for fossil fuels. Yet, it is unclear whether these reforms have been implemented, with prior studies showing conflicting results. Here we collect original monthly data on the 21 countries with the largest gasoline subsidies in the 2003–2015 period and evaluate their reform efforts from 2016 to 2023. Since 2016, there has been an increase in the frequency and ambition of subsidy reforms but a drop in their durability: just 30% of the reforms survived for 12 months, and only 9% survived for 36 months. Subsidies rose for 12 countries in our sample and were virtually unchanged in the other 9. This pattern calls into question the effectiveness of recent strategies for reducing fossil fuel subsidies. Governments around the world have pledged to reduce fossil fuel subsidies, yet the actual implementation has not been measured. With a unique dataset and approach, researchers find since 2016 there are more frequent reforms, yet most of them do not survive over 12 months.