The International Monetary Fund (those Communists!) recently released a report with both direct and indirect subsidies to fossil foolishness estimated this way:
“At the global level, energy subsidies are estimated at $4.7 trillion (6.3 percent of world GDP) in 2015 and $5.2 trillion (6.5 percent of GDP) in 2017.”
Their figure for USA alone is on the order of $649 billion per year. My estimate of what we in the USA spend on petroleum products, natural gas, and coal is about $661 billion per year for a grand total of $1.2 trillion per year. That’s nearly 7% of our GDP. More at https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/3/1869269/-How-Do-You-Pay-for-the-Green-New-Deal-Cost-of-Fuel
Given those figures, I’d say that this particular study is extremely conservative.
Incidentally, Portugal just contracted for more than a GW of solar electricity at a price of 2.25¢ per kWh with a low bid, which was not accepted, at 1.6¢ per kWh. More at https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/1/1876071/-The-Current-Price-of-Solar-Electricity
The economics are beginning to drive the renewable transition despite the political foot-dragging. We can do this, probably fairly easily (at least for the electricity part) if we realize we can and decide to do it while cleaning up the air and water and creating many, many new jobs at the same time. More on those job figures at https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/20/1851903/-Why-isn-t-job-growth-the-first-thing-climate-activists-mention
