The importance of measuring fossil fuel subsidies (FFS) has been recognized in the SDG process with a dedicated indicator on measuring FFS (12.c.1 – – “Amount of fossil fuel subsidies per unit of GDP”). As custodian agency for the SDG indicator 12.c.1, UN Environment has developed a methodology to measure fossil fuel subsidies to provide guidance to UN member countries on reporting on this indicator.

While periodic international monitoring on fossil fuel subsidies is carried out by international organisations such as the OECD, IMF and IEA, reporting under the SDG12.c.1 indicator will be the first attempt to systemically monitor fossil fuel subsidies to both consumption and production based on national data from 193 UN member countries and to collect this using an internationally agreed methodology. This monitoring and reporting on fossil fuel subsidies will help to increase transparency on fossil fuel subsidies, providing comparable data to allow the tracking of national and global trends.