I stand corrected, and happily so (viewing Europe’s debacle from a distance).

It appears that the €5 billion windfall profit from the Emissions Trading Scheme boondoggle that I attributed to EU utilities over 2005-2007 is really just utilities from one (large) country, per year (!!!).

Per a Reuters story just out, suggesting that Europe is likely to revisit the whole mess in favor of taxes — gee, what a great time for the US to jump on this sinking ship! Europe’s doing it, so we have to…to which I reply, Europe’s likely to drop the whole mess, so let’s go straight from A to Zed now and drop the idea as well” — we see the following:

“It’s completely ridiculous,” said UBS utilities analyst Per Lekander, who estimated German power generators alone would profit by 5 billion euros per year, before tax, by 2010.