G20 countries spend $450B a year on fossil fuel subsidies, study says

This column is part of a package of special coverage of climate change issues by CBC News leading up to the United Nations climate change conference (COP21) being held in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11.

G20 countries are spending $452 billion US a year subsidizing their fossil fuel industries and are undermining the world's effort to combat climate change in the process, according to a new international report by an environmental advocacy group.

"It's quite a shocking amount. I think we were surprised the scale of the subsidies is so great," said study co-author Alex Doukas, who is senior campaigner with Oil Change International.

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"We're subsidizing companies to search for new fossil fuel reserves at time when we know that three-quarters of the proven reserves have to stay in the ground if we hope to avoid the worst impacts of climate change," said Doukas in an interview from Washington.

"So paying companies to find more fossil fuels is folly."