developing countries account for the bulk of global energy subsidies box energy costs were not a large enough share of total expenditures for companies to place a high priority on improving energy efficiency when energy prices are artificially low energyefficiency investments are less profitable than they would be at true cost jaccard in economic value iran leads with billion a year in energy subsidies followed by saudi arabia with billion the russian federation with billion and india with billion the next six china egypt venezuela indonesia the united arab emirates and uzbekistan have subsidies of more than billion each a year consumers in nonoecd countries pay less than percent of its true economic value