On Thursday 18 April 2013, a roundtable for G20 countries was held in Washington, D.C. on “Recent Progress and Peer Review of Fossil-fuel Subsidy Reform”.

The programme included a high-level discussion on the imperative of fossil-fuel subsidy reform and recent progress, with presentations by:

• Benedict Clements, Division Chief, Expenditure Policy Division, IMF on key findings from the recent paper “Energy Subsidy Reform: Lessons and Implications”
• Stacy Swann, Head, IFC Blended Finance Unit and Marianne Fay, Chief Economist, Sustainable Development Network, World Bank

The second session of the roundtable concerned options for peer review of fossil-fuel subsidy reform, with presentations by:

• Kerryn Lang, Project Manager, Global Subsidies Initiative on options for establishing a peer-review process on fossil-fuel subsidy reform.
• Mark Blackmore, Principal Advisor (Macroeconomic and Fiscal Policy), New Zealand Treasury on New Zealand experience of peer review including within APEC and of the APEC Voluntary Reporting Mechanism for inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies.
• Beth Urbanas, US Department of Energy and Daniel Hall, Department of Treasury, on progress on G20 peer review mechanism to date

Presentations and reports:

Download a summary of the proceedings (PDF- 303KB)

Download slideshows from the presentations:

• IMF Presentation (PDF – 402KB)
• OECD Presentation (PDF – 474KB)
• IISD-GSI Presentation (PDF – 819KB)
• New Zealand Presentation (PDF – 1,034MB)