Big oil subsidies too big to measure?

Unsurprisingly, it's not easy to learn the extent of America's subsidy of its oil and gas industries.

Even though there's a broad awareness of the fact fossil fuel is subsidized, and as of this week, a serious intent expressed by American lawmakers to co-opt some of those incentives for renewable energy, exact details of oil subsidies are hard to come by, the Cleantech Group found while researching a new column.

Greenpeace criticizes the industry for intentionally making this information hard to obtain and measure. It believes Europeans spend about $10 billion or so (USD equivalent) annually to subsidize fossil fuels, while the American oil and gas industry might receive between $15 billion and $35 billion a year in subsidies from taxpayers

the Cleantech Group's column, Oil industry subsidies for dummies by acting editor Dallas Kachan, identifies many of the direct and indirect ways the American government subsidizes its oil industry, the various points the industry uses to defend its levels of subsidies and common criticisms of U.S. petrochemical policy.

House Democrats this week announced they're crafting an energy package that would roll back billions of dollars of oil drilling incentives, seek higher federal royalties from oil and gas companies and put the money into new tax breaks for renewable energy sources such as biofuels, solar, fuel cells and wind power. The legistation is to be introduced January 18th.

While this may translate directly to as much as an additional $5 billion USD to be infused into greentech energy industries in the near term, "don't expect government floodgates to open immediately," wrote Kachan. "There's no clear consensus even among Democrats as to how the new funds should be used."

It will be hard for greentech/cleantech industries to not count their chickens before they hatch.

"This week marked the first steps on a long road to reshaping American petroleum policy. And, at the same time, potentially infusing renewable greentech energy sectors with a vigor that would have been only a dream a year ago," Kachan wrote.

Read the Cleantech Group's Oil industry subsidies for dummies.

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