£10m every minute: IMF reveals scale of subsidies for fossil fuels in 2022

Fossil fuels benefited from record subsidies of $13m (£10.3m) a minute in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund, despite being the primary cause of the climate crisis.

- Damian Carrington

The IMF analysis found the total subsidies for oil, gas and coal in 2022 amounted to $7tn (£5.5tn). That is equivalent to 7% of global GDP.

Countries have pledged to phase out subsidies for years to ensure the price of fossil fuels reflects their true environmental costs, but have achieved little to date.

Explicit subsidies, which cut the price of fuels for consumers, doubled in 2022 as countries responded to the higher energy prices resulting from Russia's war in Ukraine. Rich households benefited far more from these than poor ones, the IMF said.

Implicit subsidies, which represent the "enormous" costs of the damage caused by fossil fuels through climate change and air pollution, made up 80% of the total.