6/12/11, "Debt-hit Greece sees profit in air pollution: report," AFP
"Greece could earn up to 170 million euros for its cash-strapped treasury from a trade of greenhouse-gas emission allowances on the Athens stock exchange, a report said Sunday.
Eleftherotypia daily said a first-ever auction of one million emission allowances (EUAs) will be held on Wednesday, ironically as many Greek factories will be shut by a general strike against the government's economic policies.
The Athens stock exchange, which is overseeing the sale alongside the Greek environment ministry, has said that 10 million EUAs will be traded this year.
Eleftherotypia said emission rights fetch up to 17 euros (24 dollars) a tonne in other parts of Europe.
Follow-up auctions will be held on the last Wednesday of every month except August and December, the stock exchange said.
Europe's Emissions Trading System (ETS) is a carbon (dioxide) market covering more than 12,000 power plants and factories.
"One emission allowance (EUA) gives the owner of a plant situated in a European Union member state the right to emit in the atmospheres one tonne of CO2 or an equivalent to CO2 during a certain period," the stock exchange said.
Greece is struggling to emerge from a recession exacerbated by austerity cuts mandated by the EU and the IMF in return for a 110-billion-euro loan that saved Athens from bankruptcy last year."
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1/28/11, "Greek hackers steal emissions rights and sell them for EUR 28 million," Wired Greek, AllVoices
"Greek hackers apparently made the big scoop
- and earned 28 million euros through emissions trading.
According to Patras portal dete.gr, the unknown hackers knacked the registration codes of Greece, Australia and the Czech Republic, stole their emissions rights and they sold them in the European Emissions Trading market. They earned no less than 28 million euros.
The hackers have reportedly used several computers, among them one located at the University of Patras, Department of Electric and Computer Engineering. The hard disk of the pc is under scrutiny by the Electronic Crime Units of the Greek Police.
Emissions Trading (also known as cap and trade) is a market that provides economic incentives to countries in order to achieve a global reduction in the emission of pollutants. Countries have the possibilities
- to sell or buy their rights against money."
=====================
2/21/11, "Hackers target European carbon registries," USA Today, B. Acohido
"An Eastern European cybergang has perfected an emerging form of digital theft to steal millions of dollars from
- Europe's carbon registries.
Another such gang, for instance, gained recent media attention for its deep access to Nasdaq's Directors Desk, a cloud-based collaboration service for senior executives. Authorities have released few details. But that gang went undetected for at least a year, giving it plenty of time to try different ways to pilfer sensitive corporate
- documents from 175 organizations.
Europe's carbon registries let companies buy and sell pollution credits. The gang that gamed them put a fresh spin on phishing, the art of tricking users into clicking on a poisoned link. They also tweaked a commonplace tool, called a banking Trojan, used to highjack online accounts, says Uri Rivner, senior researcher at RSA,
- the security arm of EMC.
Rivner disclosed details at the RSA conference last week. He outlined how the gang impersonated employees charged with buying and selling carbon emission permits. After gathering intelligence about the carbon registries in 25 nations, the gang began to target specific employees, most likely sending them carefully crafted e-mails enticing them to open a work document infected with
- the Nimkey banking Trojan.
From that foothold, the crooks methodically harvested account log-ons and closely monitored trading processes. At the proper moment, someone would log on as an authorized trader, execute a transaction and
"Creativity has never been in short supply in the criminal underground," says Rivner.
In one sting, the gang stole $31 million from a Romanian cement company; in another, they called in
- a bomb threat to the Czech Republic registry.
While the building was cleared, the bad guys exfiltrated $25.6 million. After several other large thefts, the European Commission shut down all the registries in mid-January. Some have been allowed to reopen, but the
- majority of Europe's carbon registries remain closed."
8/24/07, "Carbon trader windfall profits," Reuters
"Windfall profits are also being earned under a separate scheme, the European Union’s carbon market. Power companies, Europe’s biggest polluters, will earn profits of nearly $30 billion a year directly as a result of the scheme, a Reuters report showed on Friday.
The flaw won’t be corrected until 2013 at the earliest — nine years into the scheme.
Utilities are earning these profits by perfectly legally passing on to electricity consumers the price of emissions permits which they get for free. They are treating those permits as an asset, and costing them like that when they redeem them for producing emissions.
Analysts differ over whether the windfall will be...tackling climate change,
- or simply go to the companies’ shareholders.
So – is it too late to try an alternative policy? A carbon tax, for example? That’s the big question. A tax may be simpler, more transparent. Perhaps too often it’s dismissed as unworkable, because
- the public are assumed to be against." ("The public" are already paying. ed.)
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In plain English from George Soros:
12/4/09,"Carbon Capitalists warming to climate market using derivatives" Bloomberg News
"George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund operator, says money managers would find ways to manipulate cap-and-trade markets. “The system can be gamed,” Soros, 79, remarked.... “That’s why financial
types like me like it --
because there are financial opportunities.""...
Euro is approx. 70 cents to the US dollar. ed.
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8/24/07, "Climate fight brings mega profits to EU power firms," Reuters, Jeremy Lovell
Flaw in system guaranteeing consumers sometime after 2012.
"News of the vast windfall profits has generated controversy in the Netherlands and Germany but raised barely a ripple in Britain where consumers have been repeatedly told their rising energy bills are due to supply problems --
- notably from Russia.
"The power companies have got away with it because the price rises are disguised by rising gas prices and because people don't respond in the short term to higher power prices," said Matt Lockwood of the Institute for Public Policy Research."...
via Drudge Report
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