While Green Ventures, as an Indian based company, is focused upon the UNFCCC and the Clean Development Mechanism, the European Union has another type of system in place to reduce its emissions.
In the EU Emission Trading Scheme of the European Union all involved companies have an allotment of permits that allows them to emit a certain amount of GHGases; if this allotment is “used up”, companies can buy credits from companies that did not reach their limit.
The European scheme has produced a substantial market: more than 8 million tons of CO2 emissions were traded in Europe in 2010, worth US $ 130 billion (source: wired). But the system can hardly be called fail proof. In the last couple of months hackers have stolen several million US $ worth of credits, some of it even twice....
On the 30th of November 2010, the Romanian unit of Holcim Ltd., the 2nd biggest cement maker of the world, suffered a carbon permit theft. On that day, 10 unauthorized transactions were made from its two accounts, amounting to a total of 1.6 million permits, worth US$ 33 million. (source: bloomberg)
The heist was closely followed by a series of hacking attacks in more than three other European countries, in which up to 2 million more allowances might have been stolen.
On the 18th of January, 475,000 carbon credits, worth over US $ 9 million, were absconded from the Czech national carbon registry at Blackstone Global Ventures. This happened during (potentially staged) bomb threat in the building. Because of their unique identification number, Blackstone now believes that 13,100 of the stolen carbon credits were in fact part of the missing Holcim credits, stolen a month and a half before.(source : Euractiv and Ceskapozice)
This theft caused the EU to suspend trading in the carbon spot markets. This measure, however, proved to be short-lasting, as there was a renewed theft on the 27th of January. According to the Financial Times Deutschland companies from Europe, New Zealand and Japan were the target of a phishing attack. These companies got an email – from what appeared to be the German Emissions Trading Authority, where carbon credits & transactions are recorded – that they needed to re-register their accounts. According to the BBC, hackers then stole 250,000 carbon credit permits worth more than $ 4 million; one of the firms reportedly lost over $ 2 million in credits (source: wired).
Next to these high-profile thefts, the European main mechanism for reducing emissions from industry has also been targeted by the so-called “carousel fraud”. This fraud consists of criminals buying permits without paying for the VAT and then selling them on with the value-added tax without actually handing in the VAT to the authorities (source : Ceskapozice).
It seems that, despite the best intentions of the EUETS, the system still has lots of “childhood kinks” to work out before it can actually become the mechanism that puts a halt to global/European warming it intends to be...
In the EU Emission Trading Scheme of the European Union all involved companies have an allotment of permits that allows them to emit a certain amount of GHGases; if this allotment is “used up”, companies can buy credits from companies that did not reach their limit.
The European scheme has produced a substantial market: more than 8 million tons of CO2 emissions were traded in Europe in 2010, worth US $ 130 billion (source: wired). But the system can hardly be called fail proof. In the last couple of months hackers have stolen several million US $ worth of credits, some of it even twice....
On the 30th of November 2010, the Romanian unit of Holcim Ltd., the 2nd biggest cement maker of the world, suffered a carbon permit theft. On that day, 10 unauthorized transactions were made from its two accounts, amounting to a total of 1.6 million permits, worth US$ 33 million. (source: bloomberg)
The heist was closely followed by a series of hacking attacks in more than three other European countries, in which up to 2 million more allowances might have been stolen.
On the 18th of January, 475,000 carbon credits, worth over US $ 9 million, were absconded from the Czech national carbon registry at Blackstone Global Ventures. This happened during (potentially staged) bomb threat in the building. Because of their unique identification number, Blackstone now believes that 13,100 of the stolen carbon credits were in fact part of the missing Holcim credits, stolen a month and a half before.(source : Euractiv and Ceskapozice)
Next to these high-profile thefts, the European main mechanism for reducing emissions from industry has also been targeted by the so-called “carousel fraud”. This fraud consists of criminals buying permits without paying for the VAT and then selling them on with the value-added tax without actually handing in the VAT to the authorities (source : Ceskapozice).
It seems that, despite the best intentions of the EUETS, the system still has lots of “childhood kinks” to work out before it can actually become the mechanism that puts a halt to global/European warming it intends to be...
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