New figures published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show that the UK Government may not be looking in the right place if it wants to cut energy subsidies. The IMF’s latest analysis estimates that the UK will spend about US$41 billion (£26 billion), equivalent to 1.37 per cent of its GDP, on subsidies for fossil fuels this year. The bulk of this total is due to fiscal policies that do not address externalities, such as global warming and local air pollution, caused by the consumption of oil, coal and gas.

The most recent report by the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants in 2010 concluded that atmospheric particles from human activities, such as the burning of coal and diesel, cause nearly 29,000 premature deaths in the UK each year. The premature deaths and illnesses caused by air pollution have a damaging effect on the UK economy and the failure to take them into account adequately in UK tax policy represents an effective subsidy, according to the IMF.

Is this a good thing? I don't speak moneyspeak.

So just to double check, we aren't actually forking out £26 billion a year it's that the companies producing/using the fuels that are fucking up the health of the population/environment etc are not being kicked hard enough in the bollocks for their practices and the detrimental effect is costing the UK equivalent to that sum?

But I imagine it's a bit of a double edged sword to put a tax/levy like that on fuel producers because that'll hike up costs for everyone and once again fuck over the poorest in society.

Or they'd switch to even cheaper and dodgier ways of producing the stuff to make up the loss <_<

What we really need to do is hike up taxes on fossil fuels and bring down the regulatory burden on nuclear.