EU Claims Perfect Accounting (Whatever Its Auditors Might Say)
Chris Horner, CEI
November 27, 2007So it seems that Europe’s vaunted Emissions Trading Scheme – allowance of which under Kyoto they fought against tooth and nail, only to look at their soaring emissions and decide in 2001 was necessary, and which was unveiled in 2005 as a singular European achievement – is double-dipping, counting the emission ration coupons twice (all of which were given away to incumbent industry, anyway, but which didn’t stop the utilities from including them in the newly-spiked consumer price for electricity).
“[G]reen business think-tank E3 International claimed that around 18m allowances had been double counted, making it impossible for independent observers to verify the environmental benefits of the scheme.”
In reply, “The European Commission dismissed E3’s findings, claiming that it ‘can confirm that the number of allowances put out of circulation [retired] in 2005 and 2006 corresponds to the number of verified emissions reported by companies in 2005 and 2006... Any allegation that there would have been double counting is pertinently incorrect’.”
This is fairly rich coming from the people who continuously changed their claim(s) of what 1990 emissions were, sometimes more than once a year, even 16 years after the fact and, as luck would have it, in their favor. Also, as my colleague Iain Murray reminds me, as an institution whose auditors have failed to sign off on their accounts for 16 years in a row.
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