from earlier today
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Barclays Stops Most Carbon Spot Trading After Permit Thefts
2011-01-21 11:22:56.5 GMT
By Mathew Carr
Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Barclays Plc said it stopped most
spot carbon trading last month after Holcim Ltd., the Swiss
cement maker, lost 1.6 million European Union permits worth
about 23.6 million euros ($32 million) to CO2 permit thieves.
The bank is still doing spot trade with a few customers,
including the U.K. government, Louis Redshaw, the London-based
head of environment markets for Barclays Capital, said yesterday
by phone from the Musandam Peninsula in the sultanate of Oman.
A reported $9 million theft this week in the Czech Republic
prompted the European Commission, regulator of the world's
biggest greenhouse gas program by traded volume, to close about
30 registries that track ownership of allowances around the
region, halting the spot emissions market for a week.
"It's unfortunate they've had to shut down the market to
try to fix this," Redshaw said. "Hopefully this is the wake-up
call that's required for things to actually change."
There are some features of spot markets that the commission
needs to take control of, away from the member states, he said.
Registries should have followed or should have been required to
follow the U.K. example and adopt tight security measures
starting in 2005, the first year of the program, Redshaw said.
"We've been highlighting problems and solutions for years."
For Related News and Information:
Emission market news NI ECREDITS <GO>
Today's top energy stories ETOP <GO>
European power-markets home page EPWR <GO>
Sustainability, environmental indexes SEI <GO>
--Editors: Rob Verdonck, Alex Devine
To contact the reporter on this story:
Mathew Carr in London at +44-20-7073-3531 or
m.carr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Stephen Voss at +44-20-7073-3520 or sev@bloomberg.net
