IMF Working Papers

This paper provides a comprehensive global, regional, and country-level update of: (i) efficient fossil fuel prices to reflect their full private and social costs; and (ii) subsidies implied by mispricing fuels. The methodology improves over previous IMF analyses through more sophisticated estimation of costs and impacts of reform. Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $5.9 trillion in 2020 or about 6.8 percent of GDP, and are expected to rise to 7.4 percent of GDP in 2025. Just 8 percent of the 2020 subsidy reflects undercharging for supply costs (explicit subsidies) and 92 percent for undercharging for environmental costs and foregone consumption taxes (implicit subsidies). Efficient fuel pricing in 2025 would reduce global carbon dioxide emissions 36 percent below baseline levels, which is in line with keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees, while raising revenues worth 3.8 percent of global GDP and preventing 0.9 million local air pollution deaths. Accompanying spreadsheets provide detailed results for 191 countries.