Since the Canada – Renewable Energy/FIT Program (2013) dispute at the World Trade Organization (WTO), it has become almost conventional wisdom in the literature that a clash exists between international climate change mitigation goals and WTO law, with a growing consensus (if not anxiety) that WTO subsidy rules ought to be reformed in order to safeguard ‘policy space’ for government support to renewable energy. It is contended here that, in several ways, such a call for reform has been misconceived and needs to be recalibrated. This is mainly because the case for reform has been seldom evaluated in light of State practice beyond that particular WTO dispute, nor informed by an in-depth assessment of how different green energy subsidies will fare under existing WTO subsidy disciplines. Our aim here is to fill this gap in the existing literature. In particular, our analysis shows that the main problem is neither feed-in tariffs per se, nor the multilateral disputes that have been brought before the WTO dispute settlement bodies. For this reason, we argue that the applicability of Article XX GATT to the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement), which has been often suggested in the scholarship, is not the solution towards ensuring greater supportiveness between international trade and climate change regimes. In fact, such an avenue will provide no legal shelter for those climate-friendly energy subsidies that have actually been at a higher risk under current WTO rules (i.e., through unilateral remedial action). Conversely, the other common proposal of introducing a specific exemption into the SCM Agreement for certain ‘good’ RE subsidies appears most effective from a mutual supportiveness perspective, but faces considerable political and practical hurdles at the present junction.

中文翻译：

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可再生能源补贴和世贸组织法：是时候重新思考加拿大以外的改革案例——可再生能源/Fit Program

自从加拿大 - 可再生能源 / FIT 计划 (2013) 在世界贸易组织 (WTO) 发生争议以来，国际气候变化减缓目标与 WTO 法律之间存在冲突，这几乎已成为文献中的传统观点，并且越来越多的共识（如果不是焦虑的话）应该改革 WTO 补贴规则，以保护政府支持可再生能源的“政策空间”。这里的论点是，在几个方面，这样的改革呼吁被误解了，需要重新调整。这主要是因为改革的理由很少根据特定 WTO 争端之外的国家实践进行评估，也没有深入评估不同的绿色能源补贴在现有 WTO 补贴纪律下的表现。我们的目标是填补现有文献中的这一空白。特别是，我们的分析表明，主要问题既不是上网电价本身，也不是提交给世贸组织争端解决机构的多边争端。出于这个原因，我们认为第 XX 条 GATT 适用于补贴和反补贴措施协议（SCM 协议），这在奖学金中经常被提出，并不是确保国际贸易和气候变化制度之间更大支持的解决方案. 事实上，这样的途径不会为那些在当前世贸组织规则下（即通过单方面补救行动）实际上面临更高风险的气候友好型能源补贴提供任何法律庇护。反过来，