Glaring truth

Eliminating subsidies for coal, gas and oil could save as much as Germany's annual greenhouse gas emissions each year by 2015, according to Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA). While the G20 pledged in 2009 to phase out such fossil fuel subsidies in the "medium term", the hundreds of billions that governments spend each year rose in 2010.

Energy is significantly underpriced in many parts of the world, leading to wasteful consumption, price volatility and fuel smuggling. It's also undermining the competitiveness of renewables, Birol told The Guardian.

According to IEA research, 37 governments spent $409bn on artificially lowering the price of fossil fuels in 2010. Critics say the subsidies significantly boost oil and gas consumption and disadvantage renewable energy technologies, which received only $66bn of subsidies in the same year.

A phase-out would avoid 750m tonnes of CO2 a year by 2015, potentially rising to 2.6 gigatonnes by 2035, a level sufficient to provide half the emissions reductions needed to limit global warming to 2C, considered the limit of safety by many scientists.

That brings us back to our old question: who will bell the cat? Which government will brave it, to lose votes?