Eighteen national and regional governments including China and the European Union joined forces at the COP 30 conference in Brazil to strengthen and coordinate work on carbon markets. Now, the powerful group must decide its next move.
Brazil, South America‘s largest nation, led the effort to unite governments that put a price on carbon emissions. The coalition’s initial plans include sharing carbon market standards, ensuring market programs genuinely fight climate change and potentially having countries coordinate as they build or expand markets.
The 18-governments agreement pushes carbon pricing into a global spotlight, said Catherine Wolfram, an energy economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology business school.
“It reminds us in the U.S. that carbon pricing is not dead. In fact, it’s alive and well,” Wolfram said. The new coalition “centers carbon pricing in a way that we haven’t seen” since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, when 196 parties pledged to take action to limit global temperature rise.
