West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) -CommodityPoint, a utilities analyst and consulting firm of UtiliPoint International, is partnering with Global Change Associates, convergence of energy and environmental financial markets specialist, to undertake a multi-client research project and to produce a study report around emissions trading & monitoring software.

“Green trading has now become established and various ‘green’ commodities are now actively traded by a variety of participants including carbon, SOx and Nox as well as RECs (Renwable Energy Credits). Investor interest in trading these commodities is at an all time high. Consequently there is a growing demand for software products that will support these trading and risk management activities as well as in those software products that monitor and help manage emissions," said Dr. Gary M. Vasey of CommodityPoint. "Indeed, as forecast in our book ‘Trends in Energy Trading, Transaction and Risk Management Software – a Primer’ (Booksurge, 2006), these two software categories are morphing as the two software markets collide."

“The emerging greenhouse gas market is now ripe for software solutions on an enterprise level. Today, the environmental software space is quite small. It is estimated at $100 million with many small companies developing and extending their domain expertise into this area and beyond energy company applications (energy companies have had to comply with environmental laws in many jurisdictions for over a decade),“ said Mr. Peter C. Fusaro of Global Change Associates Inc.“The need to measure and manage greenhouse gas emissions data is becoming a new area of business development for software companies especially with impending federal greenhouse gas laws in the United States."

Tags: accredited-investors, company applications, domain expertise, dr gary, emissions data, energy companies, energy credits, energy trading, environmental software, greenhouse gas emissions, hedgeco, investor-interest, peter c fusaro, renwable energy, risk management activities, risk management software, software markets, utilipoint, vasey

Evening Standard – Veterans of the secretive $1.5 trillion (£1 trillion) industry say the $50 billion Madoff fraud could bring about sweeping changes in the way the authorities monitor activity.

"This is an Enron moment for hedge funds," said Peter Rup, chief investment officer at New York hedge fund Orion Capital Management. "Regulation would be welcome, primarily from a trust standpoint."

Enron, once the world’s largest energy-trading firm, collapsed in 2001 amid allegations of accounting fraud. Less than a year later, US lawmakers passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which set tighter corporate accountability rules for publicly traded companies.

Suggestions for rule changes for hedge funds include strengthening whistleblower programmes and imposing capital requirements similar to those for mutual funds. Rup and others argue this would restore confidence in the market.

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Tags: accounting fraud, allegations, authorities, capital-management, chief-investment-officer, confidence, corporate accountability, energy trading, enron, lawmakers, mutual funds, orion capital, rule changes, rup, sarbanes oxley act, standpoint, sweeping changes, trillion