Monday, December 06, 2010

Transparency: How Much Does the United States Subsidize Energy

Good wrote Transparency: How Much Does the United States Subsidize Energy - Environment "The government spends billions of dollars to support the energy industry, which allows it to make energy cheaper than it should cost on the open market. These subsidies—either in the form of tax breaks or direct funding—favor some types of energy over others, giving our country a skewed sense of what each gallon of gas or wind-powered electron costs. This is a look at where the government directed its subsidy dollars from 2002 to 2008."

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2 comments:

kim said...

The problem I see with this graphic is that it doesn't account for the total amount consumed. i.e. petro gets lots more subsidies but we use a lot more of it than all other types combined. They need to calculate subsidy per some energy unit to make fair comparisons.

Howard said...

True, although there is some correlation between the two. I mean we eat a lot of corn because we subsidize a lot of corn.