Huge Phishing Attack On Emissions Trade In Europe

bratgitarre writes "A targeted phishing scam on companies trading with greenhouse gas emission certificates in Europe has reaped millions, Der Spiegel reports. By sending phishing e-mails to companies in Australia and New Zealand purporting to be from the German Ministry for Environmental Protection (German article, Google translation) the criminals obtained login credentials for companies owning polluting permissions. They then swiftly sold them to other polluters in various European countries. Damages are probably huge for a single incident, as 'one medium-sized German company alone had lost allowances worth €1.5 million ($2.1 million).' German federal officials, who can trace some of the transactions, claim that out of 2000 certificate sellers, seven responded to the scam."

In Receipt of Stolen Goods

[mdsolar]

I can't see how the companies that bought the stolen property can retain it. It has to be returned to the owners. Hopefully, insurance will cover it.

Re:Carbon allowance trading is a big scam

[maxume]

So does a tax (except instead of issuing a certain number of certificates in order to achieve a given output, the rate is adjusted up or down (but probably only ever up...)).

Re:Is it only me

[maxume]

It really isn't obvious that CO2 reduction and capture is anywhere as easy as sulfur reduction apparently was.

(it is arguable that the sulfur reductions simply demonstrated that the producers could easily bear increased regulatory requirements, there wasn't really any sort of active market)

It only feels that way...

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

The goal is to reduce emissions. At least in theory, a market-based system for doing that, with a hard number of credits available, should succeed in limiting (or reducing) emissions. (Provided that you don't abolish other current regulation limiting emission in any given area.) Allowing people to buy and sell credits then rewards companies that are efficient (because they can sell credits) and penalizes companies that are inefficient (because they need to buy more credits.)

Re:Carbon allowance trading is a big scam

[Demonantis]

Could the public interest in the environment be used or emission regulations with penalties. It is just a created commodity. It will motivate people to reduce in the beginning, but not overall and with reduced returns as more companies upgrade so they can sell their artificial commodity instead of buying it depressing the value of upgrading. The only real benefit is that it motivates instead of forcing companies to adopt better policy. A carbon tax is a much better idea as it can be adjusted by the government and be used to fund green R&D while motivating companies to upgrade their facilities.

Re:Carbon allowance trading is a big scam

[Rei]

I'm kind of fond of a concept I haven't seen much mentioned -- CAT (Carbon-Added Tax). It's like VAT, but for carbon. The way VAT works is that at each step of the chain where value is added to a product, it is taxed based on the value added. Imports and exports are taxed based on their full value -- unless they've already paid VAT, wherein they're exempt).

CAT would work the same way. At each step of the way where the product gains embodied carbon (that is, either carbon that's emitted in the process of making it or ends up in the product in such a way that it will be directly emitted when the product is used), it's charged CAT.

The benefit of this to cap & trade is that it addresses the common question of, "What if India and China don't join us?" Well, then all of their goods get taxed CAT at the port. Since Europe would almost certainly join a CAT agreement if that was the standard, agreed-upon way to fight climate change, their goods -- having already paid CAT -- would not be taxed CAT upon import.

Ideally, the program would be structured as a "feebate", with all CAT tax revenue being compensated for by, say, cutting payroll taxes.

Really, though, you don't need any sort of carbon tax or cap to fight climate change in the biggest ways. Even charging for the other externalities would be enough. For example, the average coal power plant in the US causes about 3 1/2 cents/kWh worth of direct health-related damages to the economy, and the worst ones cause over 12 cents. This is from particulate matter, NOx, SOx, etc. The production tax credit for wind is only 2.1 cents/kWh. So if coal merely had to pay for its health costs, it'd rapidly disappear from our grid (primarily replaced by wind, natural gas, and possibly nuclear). Such a tax on health externalities would again be best structured as a feebate -- this time, as a subsidy for healthcare, weighted by county on a revenue-proportional basis (i.e., place with dirty power = pays the most tax = gets the most subsidy). You'd want to phase it in over 10 years so that there's time for the generation mix to adapt, of course.