PARIS: Even as warnings of climate catastrophe and calls for greener economies grow ever louder, the world is still spending hundreds of billions of dollars every year to subsidise the fossil fuels that are causing the planet to overheat.

With mankind’s plan to avert runaway global warming this century badly off course, scrutiny is mounting over how the taxpayer funding that companies receive to burn oil, gas and coal at heavy discounts is costing the planet in other ways.

Subsidies can come in the form of tax breaks, rebates, financial incentives or even overseas aid and can keep consumer prices artificially low. They are also hard to accurately calculate, say experts.

But there is a growing consensus among economists that state-backed support for dirty energy is becoming increasingly hard to justify — both in financial and environmental terms.

In particular, the cost of renewable energy has plummeted in recent years.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) says that the cost of generating power from onshore wind has fallen 23 per cent since 2010, while solar electricity has tumbled 73pc.

“Subsidies tend to stay in the system and they can become very costly as the cost of new technologies falls,” Simon Buckle, head of the Climate Change, Biodiversity and Water Division at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), told AFP.

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2019