The Politics of Fossil Fuel Subsidies and Their Reform

Fossil fuel subsidies strain public budgets and contribute to climate change and local air pollution. Despite widespread agreement among experts about the benefits of reforming fossil fuel subsidies, repeated international commitments to eliminate them, and valiant efforts by some countries to reform them, they continue to persist. This book helps explain this conundrum by exploring the politics of fossil fuel subsidies and their reform. Bringing together scholars and practitioners, the book offers new case studies both from countries that have undertaken subsidy reform and from those which have yet to do so. It explores the roles of various intergovernmental and non-governmental institutions in promoting fossil fuel subsidy reform at the international level, as well as conceptual aspects of fossil fuel subsidies. This is essential reading for researchers and practitioners and students of political science, international relations, law, public policy and environmental studies. This title is also available as Open Access.

Jakob Skovgaard is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Lund University (Sweden), undertaking research on EU and international climate change policy. From 2007 to 2010 he worked on the international climate change team of the Danish Finance Ministry, his responsibilities covering, inter alia, international fossil fuel subsidy reform. His recent publications include articles in Global Environmental Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies, World Development and Environmental Politics and a special issue of International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics.

Harro van Asselt is Professor of Climate Law and Policy at the Law School of the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) and a senior research fellow with the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). He is editor of the Review of European, Comparative and International Environmental Law. He was previously employed at the University of Oxford and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He has published widely, including in Nature Climate Change, Global Policy, Global Governance, Regulation & Governance, Climatic Change, Global Environmental Politics, Environmental Politics and Climate Policy. He is author of The Fragmentation of Global Climate Governance (2014) and co-editor of Governing Climate Change (2018).