80% OF FED SUBSIDIES HAVE GONE TO OLD ENERGY

Updated Study Confirms Federal Energy Incentives Have Chiefly Benefited Oil, Natural Gas Industries
October 25, 2011 (PR Newswire)

"An updated study on federal energy incentives confirms that the main beneficiaries of more than $800 billion of federal energy incentives over the past six decades have been the oil and natural gas industries. The oil and natural gas industries together garnered 60 percent of federal incentives between 1950 and 2010… 44 percent of the roughly $837 billion in federal support [went] to the oil sector, according to… consulting firm Management Information Services Inc (MISI).

"…[T]he oil industry has benefited from $369 billion in combined incentives, with natural gas receiving $121 billion…Of the total incentives provided since 1950, nuclear energy has received nine percent ($73 billion), while renewable energy also has received nine percent ($74 billion). Coal and hydroelectric energy sources, meanwhile, have received 12 percent ($104 billion) and 11 percent ($90 billion) of the total respectively."

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"The report identifies six categories of incentives: tax policy, regulation, research and development funding, market activity, government services and disbursements…Tax policy has been, by far, the most widely used…accounting for $325 billion (45 percent) of all federal expenditures since 1950…Federally funded regulation and R&D funding, at about 20 percent each, are the second- and third-largest incentives.

"Each energy type benefits from a mix of federal incentives. Federal tax concessions for oil and gas are the largest of all incentives, amounting to about 80 percent of all tax-related allowances for energy…The federal government's primary incentive to nuclear energy has been in the form of R&D programs…[E]xpenditures for nuclear, coal and renewables expanded greatly after 1975, but this increase was especially marked for coal and renewables…Annual R&D expenditures for all three technologies peaked between 1979 and 1981, and then declined dramatically…"