International carbon markets got a shot in the arm in Glasgow on Saturday after governments agreed on long-stalled rules for how countries and companies can trade carbon emissions credits across borders.
Negotiations over the deal were often overshadowed at the United Nations climate summit by higher-profile talks on emissions cuts and climate-change funding. But the carbon-trading agreement provides businesses with one of the most concrete outcomes of the conference, called COP26. Governments from most of the world’s countries endorsed on Saturday a set of preliminary rules over how governments and companies can create, value and swap credits to drive their net emissions lower in a global trading system.
