This report assesses why and how some countries within Asia (referred to in this report as Target Countries) have achieved success in attracting renewable energy investment, what are the critical barriers to furthering renewable energy deployment, and the policy measures and practical interventions that may help to overcome these barriers. The report also highlights how lower technology costs, increased competitiveness of renewable energy, and improved energy storage solutions are making the transition to renewable energy a reality and a priority.
For a long time, the international community has talked about the benefits that can be created by removing wasteful fossil-fuel subsidies and freeing up expenditure for more worthwhile things—but little analysis has looked at how this works out in practice.
In large part, this is because so few countries, including among the G-20, have implemented ambitious and successful reforms. It’s also because governments don’t tend to explicitly reallocate subsidy savings. Typically, all available revenue is simply pooled together and it can be challenging to associate a decrease in one area with an increase in another.
Indonesia’s recent experiences, however, offer some rare insights into this aspect of reform. In 2015, over US$ 15 billion were saved on fuel subsidies due a combination of price increases and low world oil prices. Thanks to fortunate timing, two budgets were drawn up: one, with full-cost subsidies; and one in the light of subsidy savings.
This white paper provides an analysis of the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) for 37 partner countries in the U.S. Government's Enhancing Capacity for Low Emission Development Strategies (EC-LEDS) program and other designated priority countries. The white paper includes an overview of global INDCs, country profiles for countries, regional trends, and sectoral trends. Moreover, each country profile includes information from the INDC on the:
At the very end of December 2014, Indonesia introduced major reforms to its fossil fuel subsidies: removing subsidies to gasoline, except for distribution costs outside of the central islands of Java, Bali and Madura and introducing a “fixed” subsidy of IDR 1,000 per litre for diesel. At the same time, world oil prices plummeted. Together, these changes led to massive fiscal savings, equal to IDR 211 trillion (US$ 15.6 billion): over 10 per cent of state expenditure. This study investigates two central questions: Where were these savings reallocated? And is the new expenditure doing a better job for Indonesia’s development than subsidies? It concludes that fuel subsidy reform and reallocation in Indonesia have been a major step forward in improving public expenditure.
Going for Growth is the OECD’s regular report on structural reforms in policy areas that have been identified as priorities to boost incomes in OECD and selected non-OECD countries (Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Russian Federation and South Africa). Policy priorities are updated every two years and presented in a full report, which includes individual country notes with detailed policy recommendations to address the priorities.The next full report will be published in 2017.
This interim report takes stock of the actions taken by governments over the past two years in the policy areas identified as priorities for growth. This stocktaking is supported by internationally comparable indicators that enable countries to assess their economic performance and structural policies in a wide range of areas.
