Think-Tanks'Press

→ Oil and gas subsidies up by over 65%. This rise is largely driven by higher oil prices and growing use of subsidized liquefied petroleum gas.

→ Consumption subsidies rising. Success in expanding energy access has also increased the cost of consumption subsidies.

→ Support for electric vehicles has skyrocketed. EV subsidies have grown over 11 times since 2017. This reflects the fact that India has only very recently stepped up its support levels for EV. Growth is expected to continue.

→ Renewable energy subsidies down by 35%, but likely to rise again. This reflects falling RE costs but also a slowdown driven by policy decisions such as the solar safeguard duty and price caps in auctions.

→ Coal subsidies remain largely unchanged, and the net costs of coal are much larger than the revenues. We estimate total revenues from coal taxes and charges and total costs from coal-related subsidies, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Even with conservative assumptions, the outcome is a large net cost from coal.

Today, the assessment is unequivocal:

the European Union is incapable of protecting its citizens or protecting itself as a political unit and even less able to defend itself as a geopolitical actor.

At heart, the dilemma facing European democracies today is the same as that faced by the young American states during the War of Independence and which Benjamin Franklin summed up on 9th May 1754 in the Pennsylvania Gazette in a three-word formula that all citizens, whatever their level of education, could understand: Join or Die.