Climate Fight Brings Mega Profits to EU Power Firms

August 27, 2007
From Planet Ark



This is an article about how the Cap and Trade system to manage Greenhouse Gases fails to achieve its aims. The reason is because the amount of pollution companies can emit is given to them as these carbon credits. That is the 'cap'. They then trade this by theoretically reducing the amount of polution and selling what they don't use to other companies. So the rort is that they are paid to pollute. There are other issues, not discussed in this article, where teh amount of pollution is not set until some date in the future. So these countries cut ALL their trees down (causing pollution but that doesn't matter in this cap and trade system) and then get paid through carbon credits by planting trees.

This is the sort of crazy shit that capitalism inflicts on this world. Why can't we just live the "common good"?

LONDON - European power companies are making billions of euros in excess profits in the European Union's battle to beat global warming by cutting emissions of carbon gases, and consumers are paying for it, economists say.


The electricity generators are given, free of charge, permits to emit millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide which are currently worth around 20 euros a tonne, but are then charging consumers as if they had been made to pay for the permits.

Michael Grubb, Chief Economist at the Carbon Trust and Director of Climate Strategies, calculates that this practice which he says is economically justifiable gives the industry windfall profits of some 20 billion euros (US$27.14 billion) a year.

"It is free money," he told Reuters. "It's how you'd expect companies to behave, but politically and morally it is going to be hard to justify making so much money out of a scheme designed to reduce emissions -- with consumers footing the bill."

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Read the article.