End subsidies that make fossil fuels cheap, and give the money saved directly to people
In short
- Governments stop using public money to lower the price of gasoline, kerosene, and coal.
- Most of the money saved goes straight to each household as cash.
- This ends today's system, where rich people who burn the most fuel gain the most.
- When fuel prices suddenly jump, governments give out more cash instead of holding prices down.
- The rest of the money goes to buses and trains, energy saving, and clean cooking tools.
If this comes true
A woman living in a suburban housing complex gets her monthly payment on her phone and uses part of it to replace her stove with an electric one. But her brother's small truck, which carries vegetables to the market, now costs more to fuel, and he is asking his customers to accept higher delivery fees.
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The proposal in detail
This covers fossil fuels such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene, household gas, and coal, where the government uses tax money or the losses of state-owned companies to keep the price buyers pay below the real cost. It also includes special tax breaks for companies that dig up fuel and for power companies. Each country first publishes a schedule showing which subsidies will be cut, by how much, and by when, and then phases them out step by step over about five to eight years. More than half of the money saved goes to direct payments to households. The payments are basically the same amount for every person, with extra for low-income households and households with children. So that the payments reach people without bank accounts, mobile money transfers and ID registration are set up before the subsidy cuts begin. The order is kept: payments start first, and only then do prices rise. The rest of the money pays for lower public transport fares and more routes, home insulation, and help for families that rely on firewood or charcoal to switch to clean cooking equipment. As an exception, the poorest households in areas where no other fuel or electricity is available can keep time-limited vouchers for cooking fuel. When a war or disaster makes fuel suddenly expensive, the response is not a price cap but an automatic increase in the payments. Countries that depend heavily on subsidies and have little room in their budgets get international funding to help get the payments started.
BenefitsMoney that went to fuel reaches people in need
The same amount of money reaches very different people depending on whether it is used to lower fuel prices or handed directly to people. If everyone gets the same amount, low-income families that use little fuel receive more than the price increase costs them, so many people end up better off even after the subsidies end. People can spend the money on fuel, school fees, or food, so the person who knows best what is needed decides. At the same time, as fossil fuels get closer to their real price, the reasons to choose energy-saving appliances, insulation, electric stoves, and solar panels become clear, and the choices of people and companies change without the state giving instructions one by one. When less fuel is wasted, air pollution from exhaust also falls, and fewer people suffer from breathing illnesses. If the system raises payments instead of holding prices down when fuel suddenly gets expensive, governments no longer damage their budgets with every crisis.
DrawbacksThe pain of higher prices comes first and shakes lives and society
When fuel prices rise, the effect does not stop at gasoline. It spreads to bus fares, food transport costs, fertilizer, and fuel for fishing boats, and pushes up the price of almost everything. Even if a government promises to deliver the payments properly, they may not reach people without ID or a phone, people with no fixed address, or people who live on work that leaves no record, and those people get only the price increase. Fishers, farmers, and taxi and truck drivers who use huge amounts of fuel cannot have their burden covered by a flat payment. In fact, there are quite a few cases where countries that cut subsidies suddenly saw large protests or riots, and governments fell or policies were reversed. For people who do not trust their government, money promised in the future is only a promise that may vanish, and cheap fuel is the share they can count on. In resource-rich countries, cheap fuel is one of the few ways the nation's wealth is shared with its people, and taking it away is seen as breaking a promise between the state and its people.
Learn the background
Subsidies that keep fuel cheap have become a large government expense in many parts of the world. Cheap fuel seems to help poor people, but the people who actually gain the most are those who own several cars, heat and cool large houses, and run factories that burn huge amounts of fuel. The less fuel people can afford to buy, the less they receive, and the same money spent on schools and hospitals would have given them support they now lose. In addition, when fossil fuels are artificially cheap, solar and wind power, energy-saving appliances, and insulation work look expensive and are less likely to be chosen. It also becomes impossible to compare power sources, including nuclear power, at their real cost. When fuel prices jump worldwide, many governments fear public anger and increase subsidies even more, and the more strained their budgets become, the harder it is to get out. While saying they will stop climate change, they keep paying to push emissions up. This contradiction needs to be resolved in a way that protects poor people.
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This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-20a) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes