AUTHORS: Carolina Valsecchi – Patrick ten Brink – Sirini Withana – Megan Lewis – Frans – Oosterhuis – C. Dias Soares – H. Rogers-Ganter – Timo Kaphengst

This case study is part of the report ‘Environmentally Harmful Subsidies (EHS): Identification and Assessment’. The study is a contribution to the European Commission’s ongoing efforts to investigate and reform EHS. It focused on three methodologies proposed by the OECD for the identification of EHS, the analysis of their impacts and the implications of their removal – namely the ‘quick scan’, the ‘checklist’ and the ‘integrated assessment’ methods. The methodologies were tested in the context of six case studies, in the field of energy, transport and water. These case studies focused on the energy sector and explored the application of the tools to: nuclear energy decommissioning subsidies in Germany; VAT reduction for domestic energy consumption in the UK; and fuel tax exemptions for biofuels in Germany.