Carbon industry experts at the Carbon Forum Asia, which kicked off today, called these two trends “bottom–up development” and “top-down harmonisation”.

Markus Huwener, chief executive of First Climate, one of the world’s largest carbon asset management and trading companies, believes the next two to three years will be a bridging phase. He also believes that the recent disappointments resulting from the failure of Australia and the United States governments to establish a national cap-and-trade system could have a significant impact on the global carbon market.

Looking back on the past five years of the carbon market’s evolution, Mr Hewener recalled the euphoria across the global economy in 2006 and 2007 for carbon market development. This euphoria was followed by a souring of sentiment in late 2007 that was partially due to the financial and economic crisis. This in turn led to stumbling blocks in the development of systems such as cap–and-trade.

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