The potential of an Asian carbon market

The Boao Forum for Asia remains one of the best platforms in the world to hear ideas you won't hear anywhere else. And at a panel I moderated on Wednesday on climate governance, one idea stood out.

Qian Zhimin, the former chairman of State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC), one of China's largest power companies, made the case for building an Asian carbon market. When SPIC was formed about a decade ago, clean energy was roughly 40% of its installed capacity. By the end of 2025, that number reached 74%. This was a fossil fuel giant that transformed itself into a clean energy leader.

He gave the panel some numbers. Qian said the EU carbon market traded some 535 billion euros last year. He argued that if Asia built a comparable market, it could theoretically be worth 4.3 trillion euros, or over eight times larger.

Now, that comparison requires a big asterisk.

It assumes Asia matches European carbon prices. Asian carbon prices cannot realistically converge with European ones any time soon. That would be too costly for developing economies in this region that still need to prioritize industrialization, infrastructure, and lifting living standards.

But the idea doesn't require price convergence to be powerful.

The scale of Asia's carbon emissions, if paired with a carbon price of between 10 to 20 euros a tonne, a lot lower than the roughly 70 euros a tonne in the EU, means an active Asian carbon market could still be larger than Europe's.

China has built the world's largest and fastest-growing clean energy system, but the rest of Asia, understandably constrained by fiscal realities and competing development priorities, still has some ways to go. A functioning Asian carbon market could provide an engine that depends less on government budgets or foreign aid to invest in clean technologies or lower emissions: the market itself generates the investment signal.

The era of carbon pricing in my part of the world may just be beginning. And Asia, whether it realizes or not, is sitting on the largest untapped carbon market in the world.