Climate change captured the public’s imagination in 2007, as a major report prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Nobel Peace Prize and the launch in Bali of the negotiation process for a post-2012 climate change regime, contributed to making climate change a key part of the global economic and environmental debate.

January 1, 2008 also marked the formal start of the compliance period of the Kyoto Protocol and of Phase II of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS).

The carbon market is the most visible result of early regulatory efforts to mitigate climate change. Regulation constraining carbon emissions has spawned an emerging carbon market that was valued at US$64 billion in 2007. Its biggest success so far has been to send market signals for the price of mitigating carbon emissions. This, in turn, has stimulated innovation and carbon abatement worldwide, as motivated individuals, communities, companies and governments
have cooperated to reduce emissions.