Smog in Harbin, northeast China  © Getty Images

When the leaders of the world’s biggest economies gather this weekend at the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, they must recognise the real scale of subsidies for fossil fuels and accelerate their eradication.

In 2009, G20 leaders agreed to “phase out and rationalize over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies while providing targeted support for the poorest”. They acknowledged that “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change”.

While that commitment has been restated at many summits since, action to implement it has been unacceptably slow. Read more