”The Washington Post has a front page story today reporting on how the Mafia came to dominate Italy’s renewable energy sector:

… Roughly a third of [Sicily]’s 30 wind farms — along with several solar power plants — have been seized by authorities. Officials have frozen more than $2 billion in assets and arrested a dozen alleged crime bosses; corrupt local councilors and mafia-linked entrepreneurs. Italian prosecutors are now investigating suspected mafia involvement in renewable energy projects from Sardinia to Apulia.

…

“Why are green energy programs so susceptible to organized crime? New Zealand Climate Science Coalition economic panel chairman Bryan Leyland explains:

So, to my knowledge, carbon trading is the only commodity trading where it is impossible to establish with reasonable accuracy how much is being bought and sold, where the commodity that is traded is invisible and can perform no useful purpose for the purchaser, and where both parties benefit if the quantities traded have been exaggerated. … It is, therefore, an open invitation to fraud and that is exactly what is happening all over the world.”

Read the whole thing at the Washington Examiner.