Oil and gas. Coal. Nuclear. Cars. Air transport. All enjoyed enormous subsidies for at least their first few decades. This study is focused specifically on energy industries in the US, but essentially the same is true of any of the major industries the world relies on. Perhaps the key figure from that study:
The key difference between this and most of the "renewables are unfairly subsidised" claims is that here all the subsidies are put on an even footing: not in terms of what they receive now, but in terms of what they did receive in the 30 years following the beginning of each individual industry (corrected for inflation, of course). On that metric, renewables are actually the energy sources that have received the least in subsidies compared to others.
