Carbon Markets are also called Emission Markets. The first market was lanched by European Union in 2008, just before the global finacial crisis. But it took a long time to really get going. Today the market is really important part of European environment plans.
碳市场也可以叫做排放量市场。最早的碳市场是由欧盟在2008年启动的，恰好就是在08年金融危机的时候。不过很多年来，其实都没有太大发展，但是最近几年发展迅速，目前已经成为各国环境保护的有力武器。
But who is trading the carbon, where, and what is actually being traded?
到底谁在交易碳，在哪里交易，到底被交易的是什么东西呢？
We have several markets in different regions.
当前全球还是有多个碳市场的。
In North America, you have Western Climate Initiative, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, you have market in Newzealand. One in South Korea, and one in China.
北美有西方气候倡议，区域温室气体倡议，新西兰，韩国，中国也都有自己的市场。
Allowances are what will be traded in the markets. These allowances will be registered in a central registry, a bit similar to curreny.
市场上交易的是“碳排放许可”，许可的数量都是在一个中心机构记录，这跟货币非常像。
So for these carbon central banks, and businesses, they can trade allowances.
交易就发生在碳央行和各个实体之间。
Now one allowance in Europe is about 25 Euros. One allowances use to be very cheap, but in 2018, the price tripled from 8 Euros to 25, with a total value of 144 billion euros trading that year.
目前欧洲市场的每个碳许可是25欧元。以前一直都非常便宜，但是2018年突然价格就从8欧元涨到了25，当年的交易总额是1440亿欧元。
We can see the system is just really get started, a really global market does not exist yet, which produce a lot of problems for world trade.
未来可期，但是由于全球统一的碳市场还没有形成，给世界贸易带来了不少的不公平现象。