Excerpt from Giles Parkinson’s column in Reneweconomy: The International Energy Agency has just launched its ACTION program to progress renewable energy. In doing so, the IEA has said that the perception that renewable energy is more expensive than fossil fuels is wrong, as even Australia’s own Bureau of Resources Economics and Energy has conceded. Some renewable energy technologies are already cost-competitive with fossil fuels, the IEA says, and many others would currently be so if existing subsidies for fossil fuels were eliminated, and external costs of energy production and use (including climate change, other environmental and health impacts) were included in the price.