The Paris Agreement, which was agreed in December 2015, sets the framework for immediate actions and long-term strategies to prevent dangerous climate change. This includes opportunities to address a significant obstacle to the Low Carbon Transition – subsidies and public finance for fossil fuels. Taking steps to end public subsidies for high carbon energy is critical for meeting one of the key goals of the agreement: "making financial flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate resilient development".

Our analysis highlights a number of key pathways within the Paris Agreement that governments can use to support the phase out of fossil fuel subsidies. This briefing sets out some examples of those pathways and highlights how governments can pursue them as a means to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Maeve McLynn, Laurie van der Burg and Shelagh Whitley