Understanding Enron was key to understanding the climate biz from 1995 or so until the Paris Accords were negotiated at COP21 in 2015. As an example post among hundreds here's one from the 10th anniversary of the Enron bankruptcy:
....But before Bali there was Kyoto, which Enron pushed with all their—then considerable—might.
When the Protocol was agreed in 1997, Enron's top lobbyist, John Palmisano, senior director for environmental policy and compliance emailed from Kyoto:
If implemented [the Kyoto Protocol] will do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring of the [electricity] and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States…. The endorsement of emissions trading was another victory for us…. This agreement will be good for Enron stock!!It was time to turn deeds into dollars, he added:
Enron now has excellent credentials with many ‘green’ interests including Greenpeace, WWF [World Wildlife Fund], NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council], GermanWatch, The US Climate Action Network, the European Climate Action Network, Ozone Action, WRI [World Resources Institute], and Worldwatch [Institute],” reported Palmisano. “This position should be increasingly cultivated and capitalized on (monetized).And we were off and running.....
From Texas Monthly, December 2021 issue:
Twenty years have passed since the notoriously corrupt energy-trading company collapsed. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that it wasn’t all bad for Texas.
Lynda Clemmons fondly remembers her second job out of college. Nine months into an unfulfilling stint at a Houston investment bank, the Southern Methodist University alum stopped by a Saturday job fair hosted by a natural gas and power trading firm. She got an offer that Monday, and the position was better than she thought possible for a recent graduate who’d spent her collegiate days studying French and reading Chaucer.
The work was rewarding, even inspiring. Her team played an instrumental role in developing a financial market that helped slash air pollution in the United States, dramatically reducing the threat from acid rain. When the company cooked up a way for seasonal businesses to insure themselves against unexpected swings in the weather, Clemmons was put in charge of implementing the idea. Today, that creation—known as the weather derivative—is a crucial tool in a world rocked by climate change, with about $10 billion worth of derivative contracts traded annually by companies ranging from ski resorts to commercial real estate firms. “I loved my job,” she told me recently. “Enron was challenging and fascinating and, for a young person just out of school, all-encompassing.”
That is not, of course, how most Texans remember Houston-based Enron. Launched in 1985, the company was bankrupt by 2001. CEO Jeffrey Skilling and other senior executives were imprisoned for conspiracy and fraud related to deceptive practices that grossly overstated the firm’s profits. You could fill a shelf with books written about its crooked accounting, the hubris of its management, the greed and venality of its traders.
Twenty years later, however, Clemmons isn’t alone in waxing nostalgic about Enron. Interviews with nearly a dozen former employees paint a similarly rosy picture. Working there was “an amazing experience,” one said. “An awesome place to be a young person,” said another. Still, their memories contain contradictions. Enron was an invigorating, dynamic workplace (managed by unapologetic criminals). The company fearlessly pioneered several new markets and industries (while looting others).
No doubt Enron’s misdeeds were super-villainously bad. It was the company’s traders, you may recall, who shut down California power plants to spike electricity prices, contributing to widespread outages—and were caught on tape laughing about it. When journalists and whistleblowers toppled the castle of deception, countless Texans saw their retirement savings wrecked in the process. It’s a testament to the gravity of Enron’s crimes that, in a nation where many corporate wrong-doers, if they are punished at all, are slapped with fines, chief financial officer Andy Fastow and Skilling received prison sentences of six and fourteen years, respectively. (These days, Fastow lectures audiences about corporate ethics; Skilling has reportedly started an energy tech company.)
Enron imploded with such cosmic intensity that its legacy became irredeemably dark. Yet Enron-born technologies and markets remain intrinsic parts of the energy, finance, and tech industries. A diaspora of its alumni have gone on to build innovative, successful companies in renewable energy, finance, even sporting goods. Enron also invested in developing technologies that, while they didn’t pay off at the time, demonstrated that the company possessed an insightful vision of the future.
Perhaps now that much of the hurt and humiliation and anger have receded, and the incarcerated executives have served their time, we should grant credit where it’s deserved. Dare we suggest that it might be time to praise Enron, or at least give the company something it never gave itself: a fair accounting?....
....MUCH MORE
HT: FT Alphaville's Further Reading post, November 17
They were all crooks, playing fast and loose with the truth and with the markets but perhaps the biggest crook to emerge from the saga was prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, although his prosecutorial misconduct only later came to light. One of the cases involving accountant Arthur Anderson, that came out of his decision to shut down the big CPA and consulting firm, went to the Supreme Court which reversed on a 9 - 0 vote. Unfortunately the initial decision had caused AA to lose its auditor's license because a felon can't be an auditor for public companies. The Supremes ruled on the trial judge's instructions in the case, not on anything Weissmann did (that was yet to be discovered) but it was his bringing the case in the first place that cost 85,000 people their jobs.
Weismann went on to fame and fortune and then came back to government work becoming known as Mueller's "pit bull" during the 2017 - 2019 Special Counsel investigation of President Trump. Another of the Enron Task Force prosecutors was Lisa Monaco who is currently Deputy Attorney General of the United State and who is said to be the person who actually runs the Department of Justice, with Attorney General Merrick Garland being pretty much a figurehead and maybe, fall guy.
